Paul Bisciglia Movies

The second of a long string of animated children's films based on cartoon characters created by Rene Goscinny and Alberto Uderzo, this is an entertaining adventure featuring the intrepid Asterix. The hero is accompanied by his mutt Idefix (Francophones will love that one - "fixed idea" characterizes a stubborn mutt indeed) and pal Obelix, a little lacking in the attic but full of heart. Their mission is to rescue two friends captured into slavery by the nasty Romans -- a galling thought. The trio head to North Africa where they join the Foreign Legion, apparently of a much longer history than otherwise known, and then head to Rome for a climactic confrontation with some hungry lions. For the moms and dads in the audience there are generous send-ups of biblical sagas such as Ben Hur. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Michel Gauché, a stunt double and trickster who is crazy in love with his former fiancee, work-mate, and fellow stunt performer Jane (Raquel Welch). She, however, is so angry with him for landing her in the hospital due to a badly performed stunt that she breaks off the engagement. Belmondo also plays Bruno Ferrari, the movie star he is doubling for, an effeminate homosexual who lusts after his stuntman. Because Jane is angry with Michel, she falls into the arms of a film producer, and arranges for Michel to re-do the same stunt over and over again endlessly. She also tries to woo Bruno the movie star and discovers that he is not interested in women. Michel tries hard to win her back, sometimes pretending to be the movie star, which confuses her to no end. Just as she is about to marry a dull aristocrat, Belmondo appears in an old gorilla outfit and abducts her from the aisles of the church. Belmondo was famous for doing all his own stunts, and he continued that tradition in this film. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, Louis de Funes is a top restaurant critic, the head of an important French culinary guide. At the beginning of the film, he and his son (Coluche) are at odds, as the son prefers working as a circus clown to studying the fine arts of gastronomy. The two join forces, however, to thwart the greedy owner of a chain of inferior restaurants, who plans to take over the finest restaurants in France and substitute his formulaic fodder for real cooking. Another lure bringing the son into the picture is a lovely secretary working for the guide. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This dark French comedy satirizes suburban living. Marthe Keller and Jacques Higelin play a newly married couple who have just moved into the suburbs. Nearly everything is oppressive: among other things, the walls of their house are too thin and their neighbors harangue them with complaints of all kinds. They also suffer from the difficulties of the commute to work. When this routine nearly drives the wife to suicide, they are both relieved when their house literally blows up around them. They then discover another set of indignities while they are at the hospital. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A man discovers that his dreams have become reality, only to learn that they have a deadly undercurrent, in this horror story for adults. Pierre (Jean-Lou Philippe) is haunted by a persistent dream in which he spends the night with a beautiful women in a white gown who lives in an ancient mansion, though she invariably awakes with no memory of him. Pierre is convinced that his dream has some basis in his past, but his mother scoffs at the notion. One day, Pierre sees a photograph in a perfume advertisement that looks just like the mansion he's seen in his dreams, and he arranges to meet the woman who took the pictures at a movie theater. While he waits for her, he encounters the mysterious woman in white, and as he follows her, he discovers a strange coven of the living dead -- a band of beautiful women who need to drink human blood to survive. Lips of Blood was directed by the French master of erotic terror, Jean Rollin. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A dying desert town becomes a flashpoint for racial violence in this bizarre, over-the-top drama from France. Cicada is a fetid, arid Dogpatch that had been slowly drying up ever since a nearby river was dammed up, sending the town's farmers packing. These days, Cicada has become home to a motley band of alcoholics, petty criminals, and prostitutes, with Bob Stanley (Jacques Richard), the town's solo war veteran, one of the few with any interest in improving himself. Cicada is racially segregated, with the town's black population living under a curfew, but Bob ignores that when he invites Bessie Vance (Toto Bissainthe), an attractive African woman whom he meets at the town's ramshackle school, to join him for a dance in town. Bob is more interested in making time with Bessie than making a case for racial tolerance, but enough of Cicada's rednecks are outraged by his dalliance with a black woman that he's brutally beaten later that night. One of the culprits decides to blame the near-fatal beating on the town's black citizens, and it's not long before Cicada is on the verge of a race war. Also known as Les Tripes au Soleil, Checkerboard was written and directed by Claude Bernard-Aubert, who would later offer a more measured view of race relations with My Baby Is Black. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Paris Nous Appartient begins at the end-with a mysterious suicide. Curious as to why a young Spaniard would take his own life, Betty Schneider visits many of the places frequented by the dead youth. She learns from theatre-director Giani Esposito that the suicide victim was part of a sinister international conspiracy. She further learns from American-expatriate Daniel Crohem that Esposito has also been targeted for persecution by the conspirators. By the time Schneider realizes that the conspiracy was merely a figment of the neurotic Crohem's imagination, the terrified Esposito has killed himself. The intrigues of the plot take second place to the film's centerpiece: an eternally-in-progress stage production of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Now regarded as one of the pioneering efforts in the French "New Wave" movement, Paris Belongs to Us was also the first feature-length effort of director (and former critic and film theorist) Jacques Rivette. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

At the insistence of the Czechoslovakian judges, the French-Czech Liberte Sureveille (Provisional Liberty) was withdrawn from the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, though it was shown out of competition. The plot concerns the efforts of a young man to escape his own country in favor of a more agreeable clime. What is unusual here is that the hero is a Frenchman who yearns to live in communist Czechoslovakia! His wish is granted when, mistaken as a member of a French boating team, he manages to elude the democratic authorities long enough to scamper over the Czech border. It turns out that he is motivated by romance rather than politics, but still?.a man who wants to escape to the other side of the Iron Curtain????? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide