Francois Truffaut

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Review: Two in the Wave

Conventional documentary on unconventional subjects
Emmanuel Laurent's documentary uses mostly conventional methods to tell how Cahiers du cinéma critics François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard rejected what they regarded as stuffy old-school cinema and set about to reinvent cinema by making their own films.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 01, 2010

Interview: Raoul Coutard

Breathless anticipation
It's embarrassing to confess, but the first time I went to see Breathless , I walked out after 20 minutes. I was 14, and it seemed clear to me that Jean-Luc Godard didn't know what the hell he was doing.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 07, 2010

Unmitigated Gaul

Rogues and rebels in the Boston French Film Festival
The French pride themselves on their revolutionary spirit, no less in film than in politics.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 05, 2010

Review: Adventureland

Greg Mottola faces growing pains
Could the revival of the "Portrait of the Auteur As a Young Man" genre signal a new era of auteurship in Hollywood? Maybe, but Mottola, for one, hasn't quite reached that point.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 02, 2009

Lost in translation

Digital language and Mexican modernism mark the season
Spring can't come soon enough, since it'll be bringing with it some engaging museum shows in and around Boston.
By EVAN J. GARZA | March 19, 2009

Pop goes Wittgenstein

Jean-Luc Godard at the Museum of Fine Arts
"We were indeed in a political film — that is to say, Walt Disney plus blood." You might have read that bit of '60s film voiceover in a book, but it's unlikely you've ever heard Anna Karina speak it.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 18, 2009

Review: Wild Child

Learning curve, part I
Like others who toil in the classroom (I’m a long-time film-studies professor at Suffolk University), I constantly fret over whether all those semesters of teacher talk have made a bona fide dent in students’ lives.
By GERALD PEARY | February 04, 2009

Review: The Class

Learning curve, part II
Bégaudeau is a real-life teacher who penned a memoir, Entre les murs (the film’s original French title), about his time in the classroom.
By GERALD PEARY | February 04, 2009

Saving bonds

Unconventional wisdom at the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Moral and ethical quibbles aside, society’s objection to queers amounts to a question of power.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 06, 2008

Movie music

The BSO, Handel and Haydn, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Cantata Singers, David Daniels, and Teatro Lirico d’Europa’s Tosca
Classical music in 2008 Boston did not get off to a brilliant start.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 23, 2008

Annie Hell

Julie Delpy’s infernal, funny 2 Days in Paris
There’s nothing like love in Paris — in French movies, at least, it’s the city where romance goes to die.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 22, 2007

Ingmar Bergman

1918–2007
Ingmar Bergman, who died Sunday, was one of the last of the great world filmmakers who came to fame around the mid century and changed the face of movies.
By STEVE VINEBERG | July 31, 2007

Formidable!

Charles Aznavour, the Opera House, September 21, 2006
He’s a tough kind of flâneur, and the love that’s his almost-exclusive subject doesn’t come easily.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 22, 2006

Oliver's army

History gets Stoned
While he refers to himself as a “dramatist” rather than a historian, Stone has positioned himself as Hollywood’s gatekeeper to America’s post-war past. Feel-good movie of the summer: Oliver Stone: from the Hollywood crackpot of JFK to the Republican sellout of World Trade Center. By Peter Keough Off-Center: Oliver Stone's trite take on 9/11. By Peter Keough
By PAUL BABIN | August 09, 2006

Lés Poupees Russes|Russian Dolls

A recognizable and affecting story
Romain Duris's hyper performance is diffused over several countries, all the better to reflect modern life, which it does with the wary smile of a Nerve personal. Watch the trailer for Lés Poupees Russes|Russian Dolls (QuickTime)
By A.S. HAMRAH | July 21, 2006

Following Sean

In search of the 60s
In 1969, when Ralph Arlyck attended San Francisco State, he made a 16mm short about his upstairs neighbor in the Haight: Sean, a free-spirited four-year-old charmer who talked casually of having smoked pot.
By GERALD PEARY | April 05, 2006