2 Best Movies to Watch by Jeanne Moreau

Staff & contributors

It’s bold to make a film about a legendary icon of cinema, but it’s even bolder to make one about Orson Welles. Best known for making Citizen Kane (universally agreed upon as one of the best movies ever made), Orson Welles is the renegade filmmaker whose works and techniques form the foundation of modern narrative filmmaking today. In his eyes, he asserts that the best films are made by accident. However, armed with archival footage and interviews with those closest to Welles, director Morgan Neville dares to question one of cinema’s biggest geniuses by examining the production of his last unfinished film, the Hollywood satire The Other Side of the Wind. While Welles was undeniably genius - able to inscrutably visualize a film without scripts - it’s easy to see how his tendency to stoke conflict for art could be so self-destructive. This film presents Welles as he is - both a cinema maverick and also an overly demanding artistic tyrant.

Genre: Documentary, Drama

Actor: Alan Cumming, Andrés Vicente Gómez, Cameron Mitchell, Cybill Shepherd, Danny Huston, Dennis Hopper, Frank Marshall, Gary Graver, George Stevens Jr., Henry Jaglom, Jeanne Moreau, John Huston, Joseph Cotten, Joseph McBride, Keith Baxter, Michael Fitzgerald, Neil Canton, Norman Foster, Oja Kodar, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Jason, Rich Little, Robert Random, Simon Callow

Director: Morgan Neville

Rating: TV-MA

Before assassin protege Mathilda in Léon the Professional, humanoid Leeloo in The Fifth Element, and superpowered drug mule Lucy in her titular film, Luc Besson first discovered his love for the badass female assassin in La Femme Nikita. Scored by European synth and shot with cinematography that still looks fresh today, the action thriller delivers pure adrenaline– the guns, the kills, and the drama of the hidden life– but the stylish spy film transcends the genre through the Pygmalion-esque transformation of Nikita’s femininity, a faux identity forged and crafted in the service of the government machine, yet both attracts the idea of and clashes with the want for genuine freedom and a good, normal life. It’s because of these existential ideas that La Femme Nikita became one of the most iconic femme fatales of the 20th century.

Genre: Action, Thriller

Actor: Alexis Dupuy, Anne Parillaud, Bruno Randon, Christian Gazio, Edith Perret, Éric Prat, Gérard Touratier, Hubert Gillet, Iska Khan, Jacques Boudet, Jacques Disses, Jean Bouise, Jean Reno, Jean-Claude Bolle-Reddat, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Jean-Luc Caron, Jeanne Moreau, Jérôme Chalou, Marc Duret, Maurice Antoni, Mia Frye, Michèle Amiel, Murray Gronwall, Olivier Hémon, Patrick Buiquangda, Patrick Chauveau, Patrick Fontana, Patrick Pérez, Patrick Serrière, Pavel Slabý, Pétronille Moss, Philippe Dehesdin, Philippe du Janerand, Philippe Leroy, Pierre-Alain de Garrigues, Rénos Mandis, Roland Blanche, Stéphane Fey, Tchéky Karyo, Vincent Skimenti

Director: Luc Besson

Rating: R