French Noir Watch: Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Watched:  07/27/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jean-Pierre Melville

So, there's a whole bunch of Criterion movies on sale on Amazon, and I wasn't doing much this weekend, so I got silly and justified the expense on this movie.  Because.  

Leave me alone.  Sometimes I do things.

If you've never dipped your toe in French noir, or only watched Breathless, the French noir movement is fascinating as it's so clearly done with love for and homage to American noir (which the French coined - we just called them crime movies).  I assume American culture was imported via Hollywood in the post-war years as American GI's rambled around Europe and France took a minute to get its film industry fired up again.  But the American movies are refracted through the lens of a nation crawling out from occupation, and maybe contain the spirit which gave us Camus.  

I mean, one of the French noir films I'd rec is called Elevator to the Gallows.  Fate vs. freewill and existential dread hangs heavy on the minds of these movies - more so than American films mostly being about "don't pursue the wrong dame".

Le Cercle Rouge (1970) is a crime/ heist movie in which we're told at the outset, before we meet any characters "these people will come together, and it will go very badly, indeed".  And, that is what happens.

Marvel Watch: Fantastic Four - First Steps (2025)

Watched:  07/27/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Matt Shakman

Well, nothing says "I am a cool dude" like showing up for a 9:00 AM screening for Fantastic Four by yourself.  I don't know if 12-year-old me is dying inside or deeply impressed I'm still committed to the cause.

Fantastic Four is not a comic I read a lot.  I very much enjoy the first issues by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, but kind of lose interest after that - though Mark Waid's run is mind-boggling.  I do love the idea of the team as a bunch of science-adventurers more than just caped vigilantes,* and their individual personalities and the family dynamic.  Also, my earliest memories include watching that jenky Fantastic Four cartoon of the 1960's the movie references.  

I've never seen the Corman movie, but have seen the two 00's-era movies, and the 10's body-horror movie that was Fox's "edgy" take on the FF.  The movies were uniformly not-good, no matter what your Millennial nostalgia brain is trying to Space Jam Fallacy you into believing.