Brian Porter

Released – November 25th, 2018 Written By – Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara Directed By – Yorgos Lanthimos Starring – Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn Runtime – 119 minutes Genre – Drama / Comedy / Biography As in ballroom dancing, a general rule for screenwriting is that someone has to take the lead–there must be a protagonist. But what if a story is a dance that involves three equal participants? Perhaps the most notable aspect of The Favourite, the latest film from director Yorgos Lanthimos, is the way in which the viewer’s sympathies are never aligned with a single character. The result is a film in which the shifts in allegiances and motivations can be dramatized on a scene-by-scene basis, creating a story that is not only brutally funny but also wise and ultimately poignant. Broken up into chapters that underline the film’s dryly detached tone,…

Released – November 20th, 1970 Written By – Claude Lelouch, Claude Pinoteau, & Pierre Uytterhoeven Directed By – Claude Lelouch Starring – Jean-Louis Trintignant, Christine Lelouch, Charles Gerald, Charles Denner Runtime – 120 minutes Genre – Crime / Thriller A contemporary of the Nouvelle Vague directors but never really one of them, Claude Lelouch continues to plug away at the age of 80, releasing a film annually to the indifference of French critics. In the States, his legacy will likely be the derisive laughter of high school French classes forced to sit through A Man and a Woman, but there are some genuinely interesting titles in his filmography. Similar to Truffaut, what comes through Lelouch’s work is a love of cinema, and The Crook is his film that most effectively conveys this exuberance. Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as “Simon the Swiss,” a notorious Parisian thief on the run after escaping from…