M. Leary

Last Days (Van Sant, 2005)

  (Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.” Last Days is a religious film. A loosely fictional account of the days leading up to the suicide of the lead singer of an internationally famous grunge band, it is an extended meditation on the death of Kurt Cobain. […]

M. Leary

L'Intrus (Denis, 2004) – EIFF 2004

(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) L’Intrus opens on a French/Swiss border crossing, a regulated point through which foreign people and objects are allowed to enter at some amount of risk. In the first act of L’Intrus we do catch glimpses of illegal immigrants and goods making their way through the forest near this checkpoint, perhaps […]

M. Leary

Vivre sa vie (Godard, 1962)

(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) For most who watch this film for the first time, the most memorable moment will probably be when Nana cries in the theatre with Dreyer’s Joan of Arc during a screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc. David Bordwell said somewhere that “the real problem” with the […]

M. Leary

A Grin Without a Cat (Marker, 1977)

(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) This film, renamed A Grin Without a Cat for English audiences, was completed in 1977 but re-edited in 1992 (most in the know say that these edits are “slight”). It would be as possible to give a brief synopsis of its narrative as it would be to describe the […]

M. Leary

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964)

(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) This is one of the more surprising turn of events in New Wave history. Here is a director that many mistakenly considered, and still consider, to be a minor director. Over the opening credits stands an overhead shot of an anonymous square with rain falling straight down around the […]