Film Dictionary

Fascinating documentary about musical films made behind the Iron Curtain. From Grigori Alexandrov's Stalin-era gems like "Jolly Fel...

Excellent documentary about drug addiction.

Peter Fonda gives the greatest performance of his career in this thoughful and touching film set in the Florida Panhandle.

Ruthless satire about a womanizing president trying to divert the attention from himself by fabricating a phony war.

Sardonic look at a barnyard vaudeville act in Blaine, Missouri.

A stylish, beautifully filmed Korean gangster pic.

German musical set in the 1930's.

Sean Penn gives the performance of his career in this terrific film written by John Cassavetes and directed by his son, Nick.

Musical biopic starring Jennifer Lopez as Selena, a great Tejano singer, who died tragically at the age of 23. Songs include: "I Wi...

Very good sequel with plenty of thrills and inside jokes.

Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow play Romy and Michele, two best friends from high-school who still live together 10 years after their graduatio...

Tremendously entertaining comedy about five friends - three men, two women - who undertake an arduous hiking trip across the highest mountai...

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With the voices of Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and Jada Pinkett Smith. Mysterious forces inhabiting a virgin for...

Réalisation: Pierre Hébert. Un exemple particulièrement réussi d'utilisation de la gravure sur pellicule en conjonction avec l'anima...

This movie is so twistingly bizarre, it's difficult to decide if it's a pretentious bore or a brilliant satire. Imagine a Wong Kar-W...

Plenty of water and ballet dancing in this fairy-tale about a pregnant woman sent in a wooden box out to sea during a terrible flood.

More bizarre than "Twin Peaks", more southern than "Gone With The Wind", this is a well-crafted, constantly surprising, ...

Mr Smith (Will) and Mr Jones (Tommy Lee) team up as super-secret agents who monitor extra-terrestrial refugees from other planets who live i...

The director of "The Singing Detective" teams up with the star of "Groundhog Day", and the result is a mix of "Come...

There are more dinosaurs in this one, but they are less scary.

Excellent brechtian comedy about a young girl from Havana.

Beautiful Wu Chien-Lien ("Eat Drink Man Woman") plays a devoted wife who kills one innocent person after another in order to bring...

Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Interesting film about a former asylum inmate and his artistic ambitions.

Few films so powerfully reveal men's inhumanity to women.

Very black comedy about incest and insanity.

After more serious-minded fare like "Pocahontas" and "Hunchback of Notre Dame", those pranksters at Disney return with a...

Horror comedy about immigrant vampires in Montreal.

Film noir about gamblers, gangsters, hookers and blackmailers.

Superbly directed film about two gay men from Hong Kong living in Argentina.

Satiric comedy about a professional hitman (John Cusack) attending his high school reunion.

Matt Damon plays a math genius who works as a janitor at MIT. Robin Williams is a shrink who tries to help him.

Clever, complicated film about a man accused of murder.

As cop-and-robbers crime melodramas go, it's a fairly successful film. But director Ringo Lam's steadfast refusal to camp-up the mat...

An 8-hour long interview with a famous French philosopher would hardly seem like a material for an entertaining and riveting film. Unless, o...

John Travolta and Nicolas Cage get to play both the villain and the hero in this loud, violent, but highly watchable action movie.

Sylvester Stallone plays a New Jersey sheriff who discovers that serious crimes were commited by New York policemen living in his jurisdicti...

Witty, occassionally vulgar, but always hilarious comedy about a young comic book artist falling in love with a lesbian.

Entertaining animated feature about a naive young cat from Indiana, who comes to Hollywood hoping to become a great movie star. According to...

Contemporary drama about war and peace in Northern Ireland.

Once again, Hollywood filmmakers flunked their history and geography tests: the Soviet Revolution wasn't led by Rasputin, St.Petersburg ...

Harrison Ford plays a US president whose plane has been hijacked by Russian terrorists.

Clint Eastwood expertly directs this political thriller about an assassination involving the President of United States. Great cast: Gene Ha...

A young woman (Catherine Mendez) is pretending to be pregnant, lying to her boyfriend (Emmanuel Clarke), her father (Lou Castel) and her fri...

The film tries to imitate Rohmer's "Le Rayon vert" by relying only on improvisation, but it doesn't succeed.

If you've liked "Un Ete a la Goulette", you should love this one as well. It's a nicely crafted slice-of-life drama set in...

Quirky comedy about a not-very-bright ugly duckling of a girl who nevertheless attracts swarms of horny boys. Clearly influenced by Eric Roh...

Two nickel-and-dime crooks find themselves in the middle of a huge and messy affair. This film is far too sophisticated and refined for its ...

An adaptation of Knut Hamsun's novel set in a French sanatorium during World War I. Patients suffer from various mental, physical or ne...

A study of relationships among several young couples in Strasbourg, France. It's an ambitious film that tries desperately to say somethi...

Eventful French film about the quest for frienship and love.

Amazonian jungle seem to attract French filmmakers. After "Un Indien dans la ville" (1995), here's "Le Jaguar" - a ...

If you love ultra-violent, nihilistic, deranged, sick and morally bankrupt movies, don't miss this one. The criminals are psychopats, t...

At first, it looks like a well-crafted, but nihilistic drama about losers, toughs, sadists, rapists and sluts. Every conversation seems to ...

Solid police drama about cops and their informers. Bloodhounds from Internal Affairs (led by Trintignant) investigate a team of Parisian cop...

A farce about two Polish con-men who pretend to be famous movie directors attending a prestigious film festival in France. Rarely has the pr...

A very subversive Belgian comedy about a cross-dressing 7-year-old boy who stubbornly insists that he's really a little girl. The first ...

From France comes this thoughtful and well-acted film about a bright young man who gets ahead in business (textiles) by pretending to be Jew...

Don't expect another "Beaumarchais l'insolent". Once again, it's a ribald period comedy about French theater, but unfo...

Low-key, very de-dramatized film about three working-class couples in Marseilles. It's touching and charming, but unexceptional. A minor...

Complicated French thriller about Nazis, Jews, Communists, etc.

A self-documentary in which the Belgian filmmaker talks about herself and her movies.

French movie about a young woman trying to cure her kleptomania with hypnosis.

Standard French fare: menage-a-trois, adultery, tight underwear, loose morals, tragic ending. Something about a transvestite seducing a happ...

An unremittingly bleak and depressing drama set in Fance during World War I. A young soldier, licking his wounds and trying to forget the tr...

The premise might seem idiotic - a dog changes into a man, but retains all the canine instincts - but this movie offers big laughs. I mean r...

The lives of Arab immigrants in France can't possibly be as boring, depressing and pathetic as this film would lead us to believe. And i...

A rather naive, but good-natured film about tree-hugging, veggie-gulping, meat-hating aliens visiting the Earth.

Marcello Mastroianni plays a man afflicted with a multiple personality disorder - he has three lives, but can only die once. A baffling fi...

What a lame turkey! Thirty years earlier, Gerard Oury made one of the best French comedies of all times, "La Grande Vadrouille", b...

French farce about a homeless vaganbond, his rich wife, a prostitute and a hotel owner fearing an unexpected police inspection.

La vie sur une peniche.

No, there are no Chinese people in this film, only young French couples cheating on each other (what else could we expect from a Gallic impo...

An existential drama about a French physician travelling to a war-torn East African country. Clearly influenced by Michalangelo Antonioni, i...

A rather dumb little comedy about two criminals kidnapping two dogs to help them find a box of forged currency.

Very boring film about two European scientists exploring the South American jungle circa 1800. An ordinary PBS documentary usually has more ...

Boring French film about a creepy psychopath playing a cat-and-mouse game with his shrink. Director Francis Girod thinks he's another Cl...

Un films sur les jeunes delinquants dans une petite ville provinciale francaise et plus particulairement un jeune garcon mal adapte qui s...

A young man tries to help his pregnant sister.

Meandering, seriously overrated French pic about boring Parisian neurotics. Frequently interrupted by non-sequitur musical numbers, in which...

Long, analytical discourses on philosophy replace a conventional narrative in this interesting, mildly watchable, but highly listenable film...

Not surprisingly, this film about Marie and Pierre Curie's discovery of radioactivity is informative and erudite. But surprisingly, it...

A nihilistic thriller from Japan.