Love On The Run

"Antoine Doinel Settles Down... We Think." ▲

François Truffaut did an amazing thing, a daring thing, and an as of yet unprecedented or repeated thing. He filmed the same actor playing the same character over a period of seventeen years. Love On The Run is the fifth and final film in the Antoine Doinel series, catching up with Jean-Pierre Leaud as a thirty year old fresh from divorce and trying to make sense of his love life.
There is something eerily evocative about watching this entire journey unfold on film before our eyes, starting with a tough, but sensitive misfit 13 year old in The 400 Blows. Then follows him in to and out of the army, and then into and out of marriage.

The final film contains segments of earlier films to illuminate the back story for those un brave enough to watch them all. However, I wouldn't recommend missing out on 400 blows or on Stolen Kisses (numbers 1 and 3 in the series). Both are excellent films in their own right and worth watching for the eery effect that watching a kid grow up on film can have on your psyche.

Favorite Moments: The denoument.

The Last Samurai

"I forgot how short he is."

So, I don't know much background on this recent release (notice I say recent even though the DVD's been out for a couple months or so. To me this is brand spankin new.

Tom Cruise, of all people plays the disillusioned soldier who becomes the "last Samurai." He very sweetly falls in love with the widow of a man he killed and wins over her sons' affection. I admit a couple tears were jerked. It was long, like they were trying to make a foreign film. I don't remember much else. I was eating a pickle in a bag at the time. I remember the pickle more than I remember the film. I liked it but I probably won't watch it again.

And in the end... do you think he died or went home or married the girl?

Fave Moment: Hugging the boy.