I had completely forgotten about the breathtaking stunts Belmondo did by himself in his movies. Strange, kind of like being brainwashed by US cinema in the last decades.
And all those French gritty police thrillers breathing the atmosphere of their locations - what a treasure trove of wonderful cinema.
Watching The Running Man. A very enjoyable film from Edgar Wright, but not his best. Speaking of;
https://www.indiependent.co.uk/all-8-edgar-wright-films-ranked/
Some interesting thoughts but the order is VERY wrong
The Birds (1963 Alfred Hitchcock classic): Hollywood Suite was running this yesterday while we were channel-flipping, so we watched. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen The Birds, but I’ll bet the first time was with my family, when NBC aired it in 1968.
(NOTE: I have yet to read the short story by Daphne du Maurier … and I know I should.)
I never tire of The Birds. The complex special effects are incredible, but the acting (and, in some cases, reacting, as in the case of Tippi Hedren) is what sets this apart from other horror films. The slow ratcheting of unease to terror is so realistic. I always find myself believing that this is how traumatized people would act.
I must say, though, that after learning of what Hedren was subjected to (particularly in the attic scene), and Hitchcock’s treatment of her during the filming of Marnie, I find parts of The Birds even harder to watch. Yet, by the same token, it’s an amazing portrayal of psychological breakdown.
And, every time I see young Veronica Cartwright in this film, I’m reminded that she made something of a career of screaming and crying. But I find her very believable here as a little girl witnessing inexplicable, horrifying events.
Fascinating interview with Cartwright, in which she reflects on The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien and other highlights in her career:
„Les Tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine“
The next de Broca/Belmondo collaboration is an absolutely silly concoction and splendidly entertaining, a live action cartoon globetrotting adventure, Tintin-like and moving at a breathtaking speed, with stunts, colorful locations and humour galore, Jean Rochefort as an overly loyal butler who puts a positive spin on the most dire circumstances, and Ursula Andress also in a white bikini at a beach - what’s not to like?
„Le corps de mon enemi“
Another Henri Verteuil/Belmondo collaboration, this time a dark satire/drama jumping back and forth in time, telling the story of a social climber finding the upper class as corrupt and disgusting as one can suspect, than being framed for a double murder due to his reluctance to play along. Ten years later he returns from prison and slowly takes revenge by framing all those people who destroyed his life.
Terrific, poignant, visually exciting, narratively elegant and towering over US cinema which mostly attempts this kind of story as a blunt action vehicle. And Belmondo is magnetic as always, easily navigating between ruthless, quietly suffering and enjoying every sardonic moment.
I look forward to when you reach Belmondo’s work with Godard, Truffaut, and Resnais. I am especially fond of LE SIRENE DU MISSISSIPPI (Truffaut’s best balance of his Hitchcockian and Renoiresque sensibilities, with interesting variations on his stars’ personae) and STAVISKY…(about to be released in a restored edition).
Fantastic! Didn‘t know that.
Backrooms (2026)
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve
Dir. Kane Parsons
Backrooms is Kane Parsons’ feature directorial debut, a feature adaptation of his version of the internet creepy-pasta of the same name. The film follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the owner of a seemingly always vacant furniture store. His marriage is over and he is battling alcoholism, which has him under the care of a therapist, Mary, played by Renate Reinsve. Eventually, Clark finds a “door” in the wall of the basement of his furniture store, an area through which he can simply walk through the wall into the Backrooms, an endless liminal space that, at its most basic, resembles an empty office space from the 1980s.
Clark begins to explore the Backrooms, eventually telling Mary about it at their next meeting, but he’s frustrated when she doesn’t seem to believe him. In order to get proof, he recruits his two employees to go into the Backrooms with him. This sequence, shot in a first person POV, is one of the most effective sequences of the film. It is incredibly creepy, as the Backrooms begins to shift forms the further they go into it, with it taking on various forms, such as living spaces or recreational areas that both look familiar yet just off enough to be incredibly creepy.
It’s a hard film to review without spoiling what little story there is, but suffice to say, Backrooms is a creepy, creepy film. It’s also one that will require a rewatch to fully appreciate given that most of its story, as much as there is, is left open to interpretation, and I’m not sure that there’s just one correct way of looking at a myriad of what is presented on screen.
If I could offer any criticism, it would be that it’s too short. It feels as though there’s a lot that’s glossed over between the POV camera sequence and the beginnings of the climactic sequence that could have fleshed things out considerably more. I would have loved more time just spent exploring the Backrooms themselves. The time that we did spend exploring them was quite creepy and unsettling.
The acting in the film is top notch. Ejiofor is terrific in the lead as Clark. He helps extend the bizarre nature of what we see on screen to the audience, sharing in the disbelief that we have about what we are seeing on the screen. Renate Reinsve is a revelation in this film, sneakily finding herself in a role that plays into an old horror trope, but she does it so well that I didn’t even realize that was the case until I was sitting here writing this. Her portrayal of Mary is superb, effortlessly balancing her various states of interaction with Clark, her discovery of the reality of the Backrooms, in addition to juggling her own trauma is done in a way that appears absolutely effortless. She’s an absolute star in this film, and the fact that Parsons, an incredibly young filmmaker making his feature debut, could land both her and Ejiofor to lead this project says a considerable amount about his talent and the strength of the material.
Backrooms will require another viewing in order to hand down a definitive verdict, but on a first viewing, I was quite impressed and often creeped out.
EDIT:
Ashamed to say I forgot to mention the set design. Just incredible and it’s a character in and of itself in the film.
LE SIRENE DU MISSISSIPPI
Belmondo and Deneuve in a crime drama which is basically a tragic love story of two people destined for each other, only it is a dark and destructive destiny. Truffaut is not a director I can warm to, and the movie remains emotionally distant accordingly, but the intelligence behind every shot is clear to see. For me, it’s a movie to admire rather than to enjoy.
LE MAGNIFIQUE
… and this is Belmondo and director Philippe de Broca again, making a silly but hugely entertaining crowdpleaser while turning its conventions on its head. The over the top spy action the film starts with is slyly revealed as the imagination of a lonely pulp writer who transforms his frustrations into ridiculous but succesful books. Belmondo clearly enjoys the totally parodistic scenes, sending up himself and the genre with pleasure. And Jacqueline Bisset as his neighbour interested into the sociological dimensions of his work but transformed there into a special agent sex bomb is perfect as well.
An instant wanna rewatch movie.
Peur sur la ville
This thriller about a cop trying to catch a bank robber and in the meantime having to solve a serial killer case lives and breathes the mid 70‘s Paris atmosphere, and its key sequence is a long chase scene which starts on the roofs near the Galerie Lafayette, moves to the crowded Parisian streets and ends on top of a speeding subway train - with Belmondo, of course, doing his own stunts again (with no wires or CGI back then, and the truly dangerous situations put Tom Cruise rehearsing everything in perspective).
The film is a kind of Dirty Harry variation, but the killer‘s motive actually is about society‘s disintegrating morals, with a lot of interesting subtext which also makes Belmondo‘s hero questionable. That kind of courage would not be allowed by algorithms today.
Agreed. As I said earlier, it is the film where the Renoir side of Truffaut embraces his Hitchcockian nature with the greatest success. LSDM opens with a clip from Renoir’s LA MARSEILLES, and is dedicated to him. The movies ends with our couple trudging in the snow, recalling the finale of LA GRANDE ILLUSION. In both, a twosome is heading toward Switzerland and a new life.
But if the book ends of LSDU are Renoiresque, the pages are Hitchcockian. Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich (whose supplied the basis for REAR WINDOW and several episodes of Hitchcock’s television series), Truffaut creates for me a supreme tale of l’amour fou (matched again in his penultimate film LA FEMME DU COTE). Louis (Belmondo) pursues Julie/Marion with the intensity of Scottie in VERTIGO. In fact, there are several shots of Louis driving around Reunion patterned after Scottie following Madeleine/Judy in San Francisco (they are also a response to Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU [1965], in which Belmondo does a lot of driving).
And then there is:
and
LSDM teems with such Hitchcockian references and variations (there is even a persistent detective who is killed and tumbles down a staircase. His name? Comolli. Jean-Louis Comolli was editor-in-chief of Cahiers du Cinema from 1966 to 1978).
If Renoir teaches that “everyone has his reasons,” and Hitchcock tells us that “everyone has their perversions,” Truffaut combines these lessons from his masters, and urges us to move forward with equal acknowledgement/embrace of both reason and perversion. The union of Louis and Julie/Marion represents the melding of Renoir and Hitchcock. As Julie/Marion says at the conclusion of LSDM: “I’m learning what love is, Louis. It’s painful.”
It’s probably a movie I have to see more than once and will enjoy more on subsequent viewings.
I do find it telling that many online reviewers hate the characters for behaving irrationally.
Well. Human beings. Do. That. All the time.
Especially if love complicates life.
I hope your estimation does rise.
Which is the definition of l’amour fou. I admit it is not a favorite genre of mine, and, along with R/romantic fatalism, serves as an impediment to my appreciating certain strains of French cinema. In fact, Truffaut’s LSDM and his LA FEMME DU COTE are the only two examples I like and return to over the years. That emotional distance you noted is definitely there, and creates for me a space/haven from which I can watch the film. If this were a film where its outlook, i.e., l’amour fou, had to be bought into, it would fail for me.
I have no problem and even enjoy emotionally distant filmmaking (gee, what does this say about me?). I never thought Kubrick or the Coens were too cold. Instead I saw the sly humour in watching human beings fail - and the humanity in that perspective.
It’s just that with Truffaut I rarely see that kind of darker humour (but maybe I was too young to see it when I watched the films). Although I loved the scene in which Deneuve changes her clothes and the driver of the passing car gets into an accident.
Jaqueline Bisset!!! Bullitt, Le Magnifique and The Deep 
…and CR67 
(as well as Belmondo, so it should be on the list, too 
)
It is not there. Truffaut is limited humor-wise.
Truffaut, at his best, presents an anguished humanity that triumphs over darkness. But funny, he ain’t.
So these young guys are sitting on huge birds, riding them through gigantic forests in neckbreaking speed without ever falling off or slamming into trees or mountains, and afterwards they call each other bro despite this supposedly taking place many decades/centutries? from now on a distant planet, and then the next scene has two young ones talking about something from the previous movie I have forgotten while SAD music wants me to feel as sad as them.
And that’s when I thought: you don’t have to watch this for three more hours. It’s okay not to have seen this film. You probably have seen variations of it before.
Guess the movie.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Movies: Presumably 2026, maybe Beyond
EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) 4K restoration on disc
If THE ODYSSEY is OPPENHEIME REDUX, then EYES WIDE SHUT is THE SHINING REDUX. In both cases a caretaker (in THE SHINING an actual caretaker, and in EWS a doctor-as-caretaker) has entree to a restricted and elite world dangled in front of him. Jack Torrance never makes it into the party–he is diverted by another caretaker. Dr. Bill Harford, however, achieves entry, though only through subterfuge, and is soon revealed to be an interloper/poseur.
EWS is about jealousy, sexual anxiety, and (a Kubrick favorite) male insecurity. Just as the goings on at the Overlook Hotel might by the frustrated projections of a blocked, wannabe writer, so Bill Harford’s adventure-cum-investigation may be the wild fantasy of a jealous, sexually frustrated upper middle class social climber. Kubrick said movies were close to dreams, and never was one of his films more dream-like.
I saw EWS opening day in 1999, and again the next day (digital alterations and all). It has always hung around in my mind–not a favorite, but certainly not Kubrick’s worst film. The restoration is fine–grain is strong, and though we will never know what Kubrick’s color grading would have been, Larry Smith has done an excellent job of making the film visually organic in a way it never before achieved for me.
Smith’s accomplishment (and what I would argue was Kubrick’s intent) is to make EWS appear like a film combining Classical Hollywood technique with a European art film aesthetic. There is fabulous set design, location shooting, rear projection, and second unit work all combined–not seamlessly–but intentionally. A feeling I have had since first seeing the film–a sense of handmade-ness–is stronger than before. What has been added is a feeling of old-fashioned handmade-ness. A clue is Smith’s credit–”Lighting Cameraman”–the traditional British term for a Director of Cinematography. EWS is Kubrick going old-school with a vengeance, even as he takes advantage of depicting things that could not have been shown on screen in earlier times.
The slow pace, the dialogue repetitions, the constricted acting–all serve as masks to what characters actual mean, feel, and desire. It is only at the masked ball that desire is allowed free reign. Masks here inhibit recognition rather than expression.
EWS shut is the Kubrick film that has a touch of hope at its end–especially welcome after the nihilism of FULL METAL JACKET’s conclusion. A woman is given the last word. We have moved from Lady Lyndon trapped between son and religious advisor as she pauses to remember Barry; through Wendy Torrance driving off into a bleak winter night; through the execution of a female sniper; ending with a woman determining the next steps and taking charge.
Is EWS finished as Kubrick intended? I do not know. But I do know that it works for me as a completed film. With its callbacks to earlier films–Lou Nathanson dead in bed looking like Dave Bowman in bed in 2001, and Leon Vitali as Red Cloak (Lord Buillingdon all grown up)–as well as Christiane Kubrick’s paintings on set walls–EWS is as much a film from the studio of Stanley Kubrick, as it is from Stanley Kubrick himself.
I was let down on first viewing, due to the maximum expectations surrounding the new and final Kubrick, but enjoyed it on subsequent viewings until I felt it is one of my favourites. Especially the dream/nightmare atmosphere of the film is what draws me in, something that most films attempt to perfect but rarely succeed at.
