The Visitors

1993 time travel comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A knight and his squire are transported by a senile wizard 800 years into the future. They have to simultaneously figure out life in the 20th Century while trying to return home.

This is a very amusing take on the stranger-in-a-strange land premise. leaning on slapstick and ironic situations to get more than a few laughs. It's very nearly whimsical! This film's shot well, and I really like an actor like Jean Reno in the lead role, a guy who is going to play it all so straight that it somehow makes it all even more hilarious. Narratively, this might get a little tiresome by the end, but it's a fun comic adventure and you know I'm a sucker for time travel movies that don't involve Kevin Costner. I wonder how much punnage and other word play I missed by having to read English subtitles for this one. You don't want to dig for depth with this one; it's more like a ninety minute joke peppered with punchlines, some intelligent and some dumb but most pretty funny.

The Story of a Cheat

1936 fictional biopic

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The titular cheat pens his memoirs from his tragedy-tinged childhood damned by mushrooms to the wild affairs and various criminal ventures.

Sacha Guitry wrote, directed, and starred in this classy little gem of a movie. I'm trying to think of a way to describe its style. Airy? Compared to most movies from the 1930s, this feels fresh and new, ironic since Guitry borrows heavily from the silent era. It's got virtually no dialogue and a voiceover narration (also Guitry) from top to bottom. But although it covers an entire guy's life, it's only eighty minutes long and paced in a way so that it seems like only half that. I'm not the biggest fan of narration in movies unless it's noir (almost necessary) or apparently a French film. Guitry's voiceover in this recalled Amelie for whatever reason. Maybe it's just the language though. At any rate, the tone is a playful one, and Guitry seems to have creative juices to spare, evident right off the bat with the cute title screen and introductions of the composer, the cinematographer, the actors, the set design folks, etc. I also liked his sense of humor. Writers didn't kill off entire families like Guitry did until the Coens came along. Breezy and (dare I say it?) whimsical and brisk, this is definitely worth a chunk of an afternoon.