1970s

From slantmagazine

In a 1994 interview, director Claude Sautet, who had a particular fondness for his Max et les Ferrailleurs, expressed directly and unequivocally his disdain for its protagonist, the police detective Max (Michel Piccoli), an efficient, dedicated policeman with no home life and a hard-won icy exterior. Cops like Max weren’t new in 1971—not in French movies, not in the American thrillers and noirs that inspired the French film industry, not even in Sautet’s work. But like a lady once said about a reporter, you may have met hard-boiled before, but Max, he’s 10 minutes. He’s also independently wealthy. Read More »

As Hercule Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile, a newlywed heiress is found murdered on board. Can Poirot identify the killer before the ship reaches the end of its journey?Read More »

Synopsis:
Somewhere in sunny Puerto Rico: private detective Al Pereira has seen far better days in his professional life. He would need more jobs, because his cash is almost empty. One day he meets the obscure, mysterious Cynthia, who promises a lucrative job. Pereira is supposed to oversee a notorious businessman and politician named Ramos, as Cynthia assumes that he is cheating on her, and Pereira is said to shoot proof-footage of strangers. An easy job, as Pereira seems, and he gets to work. But the lady who gave him the job seems to play a double game and pulls him into a murderous affair. In any case, Pereira one day finds Ramos dead and now has the police on his neck, which suspected him of killing the politician.Read More »

Synopsis:
In Russia, Boris Grushenko is in love with his pseudo-intellectual cousin Sonja, who loves him since he too is a pseudo-intellectual, but she is not in love with him. Instead she is in love with his brother Ivan. But as Ivan doesn’t seem to return her affections, she is determined to marry someone – anyone – except Boris. If that person isn’t the perfect husband, then she has to find a suitable lover in addition. Boris’ pursuit of Sonja has to take a back seat in his life when he, a pacifist and coward, is forced to join the Russian Army to battle Napoleon’s forces which have just invaded Austria. Despite Sonja not being in the picture while he’s away at war, Boris’ thoughts do not stray totally from women. Although they take these two divergent paths in their lives, those paths cross once again as they, together, both try to find the perfect spouse and lover, and try to assassinate Napoleon.Read More »

Quote:
In 1971, the small African nation of Uganda was taken over by self-styled dictator General Idi Amin Dada, beginning an eight-year reign of terror that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. In this chilling yet darkly comic documentary, director Barbet Schroeder turns his cameras on the infamous tyrant, revealing the dynamic, charming, and appallingly dangerous man whose fanatical neuroses held an entire nation in their grip. Made with the full support and participation of the infamous dictator, General Idi Amin Dada provides a candid and disturbing portrait of one of the 20th century’s most notorious figures.Read More »

Synopsis:

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.Read More »

As the protests at Sanrizuka transformed, Ogawa began looking for other subjects. He eventually moved to Yamagata, but considered other subjects like this one: the brutal Kotobukicho district of Yokohama. Only 250 meters on a side, it was home to 6,000 people living in 90 run-down flophouses. This was where day laborers live and die on the streets. Following the method they developed in Sanrizuka, Ogawa’s crew lived with the workers, tenderly filming the trials of their daily lives. It is a touching and heartrending film.Read More »

Synopsis:
Thanks to the support and influence of a kindly parole officer, Gino Strabliggi is released from prison and has a chance to start a new life. However, things soon begin to go wrong for him. First his wife is killed in a car accident and then a ruthless police commissioner, Goitreau, begins to taunt him. In spite of his parole officer’s continued presence in his life, Gino soon finds himself on the wrong side of the law – and this time he is unlikely to be given another chance…Read More »

The world sometimes seems divided into two camps: those who recall their teenage years as having been an exhilarating dream, and those who remember them as having been an infernal, nightmarish hell. So it might do to describe Passe ton bac d’abord… [Graduate First… / Pass Your Bac First…] as Maurice Pialat’s “The Best Years of Our Lives”, while bearing in mind all that such a description might suggest: an unsparing portrait of the era when the words ‘sixteen candles’ still might have first conjured the image of flames.Read More »