Fun With Netflix Viewer Reviews: Volume 17

It’s time yet again for the article that’s easy for me and fun for you- Fun with Netflix Viewer Reviews! Here’s volume seventeen of people writing really funny Netflix viewer reviews. These are presented completely unedited. Even when you think I might have edited something in or out of the copy, I assure you that I have not.

The 50 Greatest French Films of All-Time

It’s time yet again for my favorite feature at TDYLF- my annual list of the 50 greatest French films of all-time. One aspect I’m starting to really enjoy about this list is how organic it is. Each year, movies rise and fall thanks to re-watches, exposure to new films, and new insights. Keeping and maintaining this list throughout the year also serves an important function for me. It motivates me to continue learning, and grow as a French film enthusiast. A few notes before we get started:

• I am not an authority on this. I’m just a Francophile with a Blu-ray player, Netflix and Facets subscriptions, and a love of movies.
• As much as I try, I am not a completist. There are a lot of films I simply haven’t seen. I’ve done my best to make it as comprehensive as I could but there’s always room to see more. There are still some relatively glaring omissions. Please feel free to recommend others, as I am always on the lookout to improve this list. It’s a labor of love for me.
• There is obviously a lot of personal preference involved. However, I’ve given a lot of weight to objective aspects like a film’s influence, importance, creativity, and how much they embody the spirit of French cinema and history.
• To qualify, the film has to be a French language film. There are non-French directors on this list but every movie is a French language film.

With that out of the way, I present to you  the 50 greatest French films of all-time:

Meet the Droids

Forgive me for going meta for a quick article, but I wanted to take a minute to introduce the (slightly) new droid banners. Think of this article as an Easter egg of sorts for the site. As many of you have probably noticed, I swapped out the regular TDYLF masthead for a French-themed masthead for a few weeks following Bastille Day. What you may not have noticed is that I’ve placed several mastheads in rotation over the last few months. Half the time, you’ll see the original- the Andalusian Droid, which is my favorite because it conveys everything I want in the TDYLF “brand”, so to speak. The other half of the time, there’s a rotation of other banners. For instance…

Iron Director: Louis, Luis (Malle v. Buñuel)

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It’s time for the third entry in the Iron Director series. In the first edition, the theme was “Directors I became obsessed with in 2010”- Francois Truffaut and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with Truffaut emerging victorious. In the second edition, I pitted two people that I consider to be the two greatest living American directors, Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers. Scorsese just barely earned the win. For this entry, we’ll be taking a look at two guys with the same name, albeit different spellings- Louis Malle and Luis Buñuel. To set the mood, I highly recommend watching this clip of The Kingsmen singing Louie, Louie. These two have always been linked in my head for a handful of reasons. I have an ongoing internal conversation about which of the two is my 2nd favorite director of all-time. I’ve mentioned both of them as my 2nd favorite on multiple occasions. Depending on the week, you’re liable to get a different answer. I’m a great admirer of both of their filmographies. Both have worked, and excelled, in several countries. There aren’t a lot of similarities on the surface, but going a little deeper shows that they’re not wildly different. Let’s dig in:

100 Things I Love About the Movies

I passed a milestone recently here at TDYLF. Thanks to the help of the editors over at IMDB, I passed the 100,000 Hits milestone on Sunday (with a whopping 80,000+ of those hits coming just since September 30th). To celebrate, I’m beginning a brand new series called “100 Things I Love About the Movies”. To be sure, there a LOT more than 100 things that I love about the movies. As such, this has the potential to become a series- 100 Things I Love About Horror Movies, 100 Things I Love About Foreign Movies, and on and on. I present to you the first edition of “100 Things I Love About the Movies”.

How are you finding my blog?

Shortly after I started this blog, I received a really quick lesson about tags and keywords. One of my first entries was about Nazi zombie movies, and I’d referenced Dead Snow, a film that features a couple having sex while the guy is pooping. And so I added “Sex while pooping” to my list of post tags. About a week later, someone out there in the world searched for “pooping blogs” and found mine. It was, quite frankly, horrifying. This means that someone who is aroused by defecation was visiting my blog. I felt so… dirty. Since then, I’ve been (slightly) more careful about what I’ll use for keywords and tags. What else have people searched for to find my blog?

A List Par Excellence: The Top 50 French Films of All-Time

EDITOR’S NOTE: I made this list in 2010. I updated the list in 2011. The updated list is more complete and puts far less emphasis on personal preference. The new and improved version can be found here.

On the cusp of Bastille Day, and with such a rich history of French cinema, I felt that it was only fitting to create a list of the 50 best French films. Initially, I’d planned on simply listing them in no particular order. However, mon ami, I eventually determined that it wouldn’t be fair to not put forth the extra effort. They’re now listed at least in order of personal preference, with some weight given to overall quality. In other words, there are likely more influential films or higher quality films further down the list. But their higher quality doesn’t overcome my overall enjoyment of the other films higher up on the list.

Five Must-See Scenes and Films from Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel was a genius, the master of the absurd. If John Cassavetes is the Godfather of Independent Cinema, then Buñuel is the Godfather of Surrealist Cinema, starting with his landmark collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1929, Un Chien Andalou. His career was spent laying social conventions to waste. Sometimes he nailed sexual conventions. Sometimes it was class structure. Sometimes it was religion. If there’s a social institution or convention out there, he found a way to poke fun at it. Here are five must-see scenes/films from Buñuel.