Darren | the m0vie blog

414. Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le Vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped) (#250)

Posted on March 8, 2025 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week with special guest Brendan Hodges, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This week, Robert Bresson’s Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le Vent souffle où il veut.

A member of the French Resistance is arrested by the Nazi authorities and sentenced to death. However, he vows to escape.

At time of recording, it was ranked 250th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: A Man Escaped, Andrew, character dynamics, Darren, emotional resonance, freedom, human spirit, individual choices, minimalist storytelling, Robert Bresson, sound and silence, spirituality | Leave a comment »

An Interview with Robert Davi

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Darren

We’ve been doing a bit of celebrating this month, to mark Bond’s fiftieth anniversary on film (and the release of Skyfall). Actor Robert Davi, who played the villain Franz Sanchez in Licence to Kill, was kind enough to get in contact with us about a piece we published covering the character, and politely volunteered to ask a few questions about the film. Davi has been a remarkably recognisable screen presence since the eighties, with roles in iconic movies like Licence to Kill, The Goonies, Die Hard and the hit television show Profiler.

He now manages his own film (Sun Lion Films) and music production (Sun Lion Records) companies. In 2007, he made his directorial debut with The Dukes, and launched a professional singing career in 2011. You can check out his Sinatra-inspired work at Davi Sings Sinatra, with some great testimonials. (Quincy Jones knows music, and his endorsement is worth more than mine – although consider mine offered as well. Check out a sampler here.)

The opportunity to ask Davi some questions was too good to pass up. It was a delight to be able to put some of my questions to him, and Davi was very generous with his time in answering quite a few of the more tangential and nerdy ones – a great insight into the construction of, I’d argue, one of the more fascinating Bond villains.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bond, casino royale, Darren, Franz Sanchez, ian fleming, James Bond in film, John Glenn, Licence to Kill, Richard Maibaum, robert davi, Sanchez, United States | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: 21 Jump Street

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Darren

The review was embargoed until the 5th March 2012.

The obvious point of comparison to Jonah Hill’s big-screen adaptation of 21 Jump Street is the Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson version of Starsky & Hutch. After all, both take classic cult television shows and recycle them for modern audiences, taking dramatic plot devices that seem hilarious and goofy in hindsight and playing them as straight comedy. There is, however, one very crucial difference between that adaptation of a seventies cop show and this adaptation of an eighties cop show: 21 Jump Street works. Mostly.