tmclancy

Member since 3/9/2007, last signed in awhile ago.

"le cinephile sporadique"

Send a message

Add to contacts

Invite to a group

Interested in:Avant-garde / Experimental, Comedy, Comedy Drama, Culture & Society, Drama, Family & Personal Relationships, Film, TV & Radio, Language & Literature, Music, Spirituality & Philosophy, Theater

tmclancy's movie tags

Talk

A Woman Is a Woman

Godard's A Woman is a Woman (1961)
By tmclancy in le cinéphile sporadique
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"An absolutely brilliant satire of the American musical, carrying on Godard's avant-garde sound techniques and cinema verite style (complete with some incredible tracking shots) as well as his heavily utilized theme (in his earlier works especially) of the male-female societal relationship in France contrasted with that relationship in the US. Possibly the most accessible Godard film I have seen yet, I would recommend this to anybody as a place to start delving into Godard's work. " [More]

Breathless

Breathless, Reinvented: A revie ...
By tmclancy in le cinéphile sporadique
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"I have always appreciated the idea of the New Year. That one moment, when admidst all of life's turmoil, we turn our attentions to the year ahead, decide on ways we can improve ourselves, and bid farewell to all of the joys and miseries of the past year. And of course I know all too well the awkward feeling of ringing in a new year alone in love. Be it the evils of societal pressure, or a simple reminder that I am again alone on the birth of a new year, I always crave partnership when I am in this situation. This may be just one reason why indie director Alex Holdridge's In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007) struck such a chord with me. As a film, I see it as the remake of Godard's Breathless (1960) that Jim McBride failed to make with his Breathless (1983). Both this and the McBride film are set in Los Angeles, but where McBride went wrong, in trying to transfer a story that only made sense in 1959 Paris to 1983 LA, Holdridge completely avoided, creating an entirely new story t ... " [More]

Breathless

Breathless, Recycled.
By tmclancy in le cinéphile sporadique
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"It may seem redundant, or even ironic, that an American filmmaker trying to jump-start his career in Hollywood would wish to remake a French film that already refers so heavily to Hollywood cinema. Yet this did not stop Jim McBride from remaking Jean-Luc Godard's classic 1959 film, A bout de souffle. Godard's first film is definitive of the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s that is said to have revolutionized cinema not just in France, but world-wide. Not only that, but his film is one of the pioneers of the movement. McBride's 1983 remake, entitled Breathless, is also definitive of the cinematic culture from which it came: that of 1980s Hollywood. However, it is certainly nothing remotely close to a pioneer. Though it was not actually backed by a major Hollywood studio, Breathless contains formulaic 1980s Hollywood characteristics such as lighting that flatters and glorifies the actors; steady camera movements and conventional cinematography; polish ... " [More]

The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums and the Am ...
By tmclancy in le cinéphile sporadique
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"Within the past decade of mainstream American cinema, very few directors have developed a style as distinctive and recognizable as Houston, Texas raised Wes Anderson. Anderson began his filmmaking career in the early 1990s, after graduating from the University of Texas where he studied philosophy. His first two films, Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998) feature a setting similar to that of his childhood: upper-middle class Texas. However with his third film, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Anderson seems to break free from his origins, as if his unique style is able to stand on its own, and inhabit any setting. On a referential level, the film is simple. The backstory, which Anderson meticulously builds up in the first seven minutes of the film, is that Royal Tenenbaum, a prominent lawyer, buys a mansion on Archer Avenue in New York City in the late 1960s where he and his wife, Etheline, have three children before they separate a decade later. After Royal leaves, Etheline, a stau ... " [More]