french films

The Return of “My Favorite Season,” a Great Modern Melodrama
April 28, 2025
Melodrama isn’t central to modern French cinema, because melodrama is rooted in irony, whereas one could hardly slip a playing card between most great French directors’ intentions and results....
The Hitchcockian Wonders of “Misericordia”
March 21, 2025
The vitality of classic formats such as thrillers and mysteries comes not from their nostalgic reminders of old movies but from their power to inspire and embody new ideas...
“This Life of Mine”: A Terminal Masterwork
March 4, 2025
Film festivals are important showcases for films that don’t yet have distribution, but there’s a hitch in the process. What happens when a movie, after a première at a...
An Ingenious New French Comedy of Art and Friendship
July 9, 2024
One of the privileges and pleasures of working as a film critic is that people occasionally send me movies that aren’t yet available in the U.S. Some of them...
“Last Summer” Is a Ferocious Vision of Sexual Frenzy
June 28, 2024
A decade ago, when the Wolfie Wars were being fought—with critics charging that Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” condoned the exuberant protagonist’s stock-market fraud—I averred that any...