04. LES QUATRE CENT COUPES (François Truffaut, 1959)

lol, yeah, I really need to train with this countdown of my top 100. My last review for #5 was almost seven months ago. Blimey. So here we are! Number 4.

12-year-old Antoine Doinel just can’t seem to get it right. At home, his mother and father neglect him. At school, all he ever seems to does is get himself into trouble (the French translation of faire les quatre cent coups means to raise hell), and he’s happiest when he’s bunking school, just roaming the streets. 

He’s not a bad egg by any means, just one who seems to be the unfortunate one who gets caught doing something even though everyone else is (case in point—his classmates pass around a picture of a nude lady, but when the teacher walks in it is he holding it). 

Only three this week.

Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)

Grief-ridden at his wife's unexpected suicide, Marlon Brando's Paul embarks on an extremely physical and ultimately destructive affair with Maria Schneider's Jeanne, a confused and neglected girlfriend of Jean-Pierre Léaud's self-absored filmmaker. 

I desperately wanted to like this film as I am both a massive fan of 1970s Bertolucci as well as Marlon Brando (well, he is my favourite actor, after all), but it was all I could do from laughing at this. The "human interaction" was embarrassing - the dialogue was extemely poor, the direction was still and self-obsessed and the sex scenes were mechanical and loveless. 

As ever, Brando puts his heart and soul into it - his monologue to the corpse of his wife is as affecting as I've been told to find it - but this was far from his best performance of all time, and Maria Schneider's constant bland line-reading hindered the quality of the acting further. 

Sloppy and depressing, only watch if you enjoy seeing people using butter as lubricant (which hopefully you don't. So basically don't watch it.)

Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007)

Highly dissatisfying and uninteresting "comedy" about how schlubby bum Seth Rogen gets Katherine Heigl's high-flying career girl pregnant after being too lazy to bag up, and the ensuing bonding/whining/supposedly hilarity that arises from her being pregnant. 

The film wasn't totally awful; I really liked Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Jason Segel's turn in it, and I've been told that a drunken Emma physically resembles Charlyne Yi, so I guess I like her too. 

Plus there were moments when Rogen's loser of a character did exude a kind of charm, in a so-much-of-an-excuse-for-a-human-being-that-you-have-to-pity-him kind of way. But the two leads have zero chemistry and the premise is so derivative.

Lie to Me (John Stewart Muller, 2008)

Concluding the trilogy of rubbish films, Lie to Me is about a couple in an open relationship who find their bond tested when they find themselves falling for other people. 

Um... that's about it really, badly acted, written, directed, and a bit of an all-round fail.

Not the best selection of films last week, I'm afraid. Hopefully next week will hold better viewing options.

87. Day for Night (François Truffaut, 1973).