Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté

Highlights of this entry: A shirtless Godard sitting at his typewriter, smoking a cigar and wearing a horrifying neon blue visor. Also, Tom Waits.

For God's sake who is that charismatic girl talking about art and stuff.

"Art is like fire. Born from what it burns." (Score applies to the series taken as a whole.)

It says a lot about this series that every time a clip from one of Godard's own films came up i just wished i was watching that instead...

Not much fun to watch; it's hard to shake the feeling that this is just an extended exercise in arbitrary visual rhyming & juxtaposition. The theme of cinema's relation to humanity is perhaps so fundamental as to be impenetrable, so maybe I expect too much, but Godard's narration is only occasionally interesting to me. I will however say that I believe this is a sincere work that is more meaningful than I'm perceiving. It's just not for me. (review for full series)

A loosely-connected smattering of barely related clips and really bad video effects, with Godard occasionally muttering something meaningless. This kind of free-association essay format can be interesting, and occasionally Godard nails an intriguing transition, but most of the time you're just wondering where he's going with all this. Answer: eh, nowhere in particular. The best thing is that it reminds you of better movies that you'd like to see again, without all the surrounding nonsense.