So it turns out I now have enough for two separate batches of reviews and I still have to do caramel, so I'll get one out of the way now and then do Caramel straight away afterwards. Oh what a slave I am to this blog (besides, I'm waiting for someone so it's not a bad time-killer) ... 
Coming up is the first film I've seen from someone, the last film from someone else and a couple of french films.
So taking the first, My Man Godfrey is the first Carole Lombard film I've ever seen. It stars William Powell as a "forgotten man" who a woman finds at the city dump and she attempts to pay him to be shown off at their swanky scavenger hunt. Insulted, he refuses, but on seeing the woman's sister (Lombard) destined to lose to her he agrees to go with the sister and get her to win instead. Thereafter she employs him as the latest in a revolving door of butlers in and out of this mad family's house. Consistently funny, sometimes hilarious film, don't think it deserved all the oscar nominations it got but a fine ensemble, especially Powell, having a lot of fun.
So from an introduction to Carole Lombard to the final piece in the jigsaw in my Wong Kar-Wai feature films puzzle (that is, until he releases Ashes of Time : Redux soon), namely Fallen Angels. This doesn't have a dvd distributor here and I got sent this by a truly wonderful person (who rather less wonderfully had it imprinted with unremovable French subtitles 
, but the English ones I found fitted nicely over the top and took precedence, as they should 
) and I enjoyed it a lot. I expected it to be about hitmen, and half of it is, but it's very in the vein of Chungking Express, refreshingly so. Takeshi Kaneshiro's segment as the mute (so because of a Chungking reference) is extremely, unexpectedly funny and the parallel story of the killers is incredibly stylish as the peerless Christopher Doyle is on top form. Funny, sexy, film that lacks the charm throughout that made Chungking Express such a modern classic, but has more than enough going for itself to recommend it, if you can get your hands on it.
So, on to the french and not a good pair of films to talk about so excuse my curtness. First was the 70s Truffaut film The Man Who Loved Women. I really grew to dislike this film the longer it went. Truffaut has criticised John Ford's portrayal of men and women's relationship with all the ass-slapping over the years - clearly treating women like absolute crap and using them as sex objects is fine for little François then, as long as there's an unbelievably juvenile threesome in thrown in 
. Lead actor was wooden and unconvincing, some of the women did well (especially Leslie Caron) but it's such a pathetic tale which *demands* sympathy with or admiration for the lead character, so his being devoid of any redeemable features ensures that the film falls flat on its face.
Equally as disappointing, if for different reasons, was How I Killed My Father, which won Michel Bouquet (veteran of 70s Claude Chabrol films I've enjoyed) a César - it stars Charles Berling, who if not for Les destinées sentimentales I would never believe could act. He's in full non-acting mode here, the blank page, but not in a good way, the ultimate in "make a face and let the audience do the rest of the work" technology. The story is that he hears news that his father died a month ago, then we flashback to his estranged father of 20 years turning up out of the blue at a party to celebrate Berling's success. It wants to be a Chabrol kind of film, but beyond the opening none of the mood or tension that filmmaker is renowned for is present. So scene after scene of not much happening leads to a drag to the limp finish of a race that wasn't really worth running. Shame.