french movies that you need to watch

Avid movie-watcher and video store clerk Bazil has had his life all but ruined by weapons of war. His father was killed by a landmine in Morocco and one fateful night a stray bullet from a nearby shootout embeds itself in his skull, leaving him on the verge of instantaneous death. Losing his job and his home, Bazil wanders the streets until he meets Slammer, a pardoned convict who introduces him to a band of eccentric junkyard dealers including Calculator, a math expert and statistician, Buster, a record-holder in human cannonball feats, Tiny Pete, an artistic craftsman of automatons, and Elastic Girl, a sassy contortionist. When chance reveals to Bazil the two weapons manufacturers responsible for building the instruments of his destruction, he constructs a complex scheme for revenge that his newfound family is all too happy to help set in motion.

As the light fades and the city goes to sleep, two forces emerge. They are invisible except for the power they exert over us in our sleep, battling for our souls through dreams. One force delivers hope and strength through good dreams; the other infuses the subconscious with desperation through nightmares. John and Emma, Father and Daughter are wrenched into this fantastical dream world battle, forced to fight for John's soul and to save Emma from an eternal nightmare. Separate in their journey, they encounter unusual characters that exist only in their subconscious. Or do they?

In the post-apocalyptic future, only a few humans are left. No one is able to speak; the film contains no dialogue, and characters communicate non-verbally. A determined loner befriends a reclusive older man and these two battle against vicious thugs for food, shelter and life itself.

An urgent life-or-death dilemma befalls Nikita--the feral street girl and violent drug addict--after killing a police officer at point blank. Hopeless, Nikita is given a new lease of life, when she reluctantly exchanges her doomed fate for a secret government program that promises to mould her into a cold-blooded assassin under the wing of her sadistic mentor, Bob. Now--with a new set of skills, a new identity, and lethally sophisticated looks--Nikita is the ultimate weapon and the perfect puppet for doing the government's dirty work; however, what happens if this trained killer chooses love over death?

Following the death of his father from cancer, Stéphane - Mexican on his father's side, French on his mother's side - agrees, despite his less than proficient use of the French language, on his mother's request to move back to France from Mexico, she not only letting him live in her apartment in his old bedroom in the building she owns while she stays with her current boyfriend Gérard, a magician, but she having found him a job using his graphic art skills at a calendar shop. The job ends up not being quite as she had made it out to be - it more a dead end menial job - but Stéphane is still able to eke out a friendship of sorts with his new coworkers, especially Guy, the senior employee, a bully of a man-child who obsesses about sex and who becomes Stéphane's confidante. Concurrently, Stéphane strikes a friendship with his neighbor, Stéphanie, and her friend, Zoé, Stéphane and their friendship stemming out of some mistruths, including the two artistically inclined women not divulging they, like him, lead dead end nine-to-five jobs, and Stéphane also not divulging that he is actually Stéphanie's neighbor and the son of her landlady which allows him to spy on Stéphanie's apartment without notice. While Stéphane is romantically interested in Zoé, he believes Stéphanie in turn is interested in him. Regardless, Stéphane forms a special bond with Stéphanie, their similar names only one of the many factors which may indicate that the cosmos meant for them to have this bond. Despite what Stéphanie may feel for Stéphane in return, their friendship/relationship will be affected by Stéphane often not being able to differentiate between reality and what are, to him, his very vivid dreams.

Forty-year-old Andreas arrives in a strange city with no memory of how he got there. He is presented with a job, an apartment - even a wife. But before long, Andreas notices that something is wrong. Andreas makes an attempt to escape the city, but he discovers there's no way out. Andreas meets Hugo, who has found a crack in a wall in his cellar. Beautiful music streams out from the crack. Maybe it leads to "the other side"? A new plan for escape is hatched.

An Innuit hunter races his sled home with a fresh-caught halibut. This fish pervades the entire film, in real and imaginary form. Meanwhile, Axel tags fish in New York as a naturalist's gofer. He's happy there, but a messenger arrives to bring him to Arizona for his uncle's wedding. It's a ruse to get Axel into the family business. In Arizona, Axel meets two odd women: vivacious, needy, and plagued by neuroses and familial discord. He gets romantically involved with one, while the other, rich but depressed, plays accordion tunes to a gaggle of pet turtles.

Bizarre, unreal black comedy about solitude and the dehumanization of the modern world, through the adventures of three men. First introduced is Alphonse Tram, an unemployed young man. His only neighbour is the police chief-inspector Morvandieu. The third man is the murderer of Alphonse's wife.

Preest is a masked vigilante detective, searching for his nemesis on the streets of Meanwhile City, a monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervor. Esser is a broken man, searching for his wayward son amongst the rough streets of London's homeless. Milo is a heartbroken thirty-something desperately trying to find a way back to the purity of first love. Emilia is a beautiful art student; her suicidal art projects are becoming increasingly more complex and deadly.

A knight and his valet are plagued by a witch, and to repair the damage, they make use of the services of a wizard. Something goes wrong and they're transported from the 12th century to the year 2000, where they meets some of the knight's family, and slowly learns what the future's like. In order to return to the 12th century and deal with the witch, they begin to look for a wizard.

In a future world, young people are increasingly becoming addicted to an illegal (and potentially deadly) battle simulation game called Avalon. When Ash, a star player, hears of rumors that a more advanced level of the game exists somewhere, she gives up her loner ways and joins a gang of explorers. Even if she finds the gateway to the next level, will she ever be able to come back to reality?

The charismatic criminal Dobermann, who got his first gun when he was christened, leads a gang of brutal robbers. After a complex and brutal bank robbery, they are being hunted by the Paris police. The hunt is led by the sadistic cop Christini, who only has one goal: to catch Dobermann at any cost.

Gerard Depardieu plays a sleazy Paris nightclub owner and ex-detective who flies to Hong Kong to rescue the young son of a friend murdered by the Chinese mob. He leaves the boy in the hands of an earnest priest (Christian Clavier), who escorts him back to Paris. Soon Clavier and Depardieu are fighting it out, each shadowed by his good or evil guardian angel.

The last day of creation. A stranger arrives in London. No one knows who he is or where he has come from. By the time he leaves, the entire universe will have been erased. A black comedy about the Apocalypse, 'The Nine Lives...' presents a unique brand of left-field humour, spiritual beauty and spectral horror.

Thomas is a young agoraphobic man; he's afraid of coming to any kind of contact with other people, so he lives totally isolated in his apartment. The story takes place in the near future where everything can be done through computers, so Thomas hasn't left his apartment for eight straight years. However, although his life seems complete, he misses human contact, so his psychoanalyst consults him to meet a woman through some on-line service. Is it possible for Thomas to fall in love with a woman? And if so, is he going to get out of his apartment for that woman?

André, a small-time ex-convict, seems to owe money to everyone in Paris, including a crime boss who promises to kill him if he doesn't repay him by midnight. After failing to find protection from the American embassy and the French police, a despairing André scrambles onto a bridge over the Seine, intending to leap to his death. He is surprised to see a tall, beautiful girl clinging to a rail on the same bridge, apparently preparing to end her life as well. She jumps, and he jumps too, suddenly resolving to save her life. After scrambling ashore, she tells him her name is Angel-A. Together, they take a cruise on the Seine, repay André's creditors, visit a Parisian nightspot, and more, as Angel-A helps André. He learns that for this purpose she has fallen out of the sky and into his life. André finds himself falling in love with this mysterious beauty.

Among normal humans live the "Others" possessing various supernatural powers. They are divided up into the forces of light and the forces of the dark, who signed a truce several centuries ago to end a devastating battle. Ever since, the forces of light govern the day while the night belongs to their dark opponents. In modern day Moscow the dark Others actually roam the night as vampires while a "Night Watch" of light forces, among them Anton, the movie's protagonist, try to control them and limit their outrage.

Trapped in the labyrinths of time, Godefroy de Montmiral and his devoted footman are hurtled into an epoch of political and social upheavals: The French Revolution. And more precisely The Reign of Terror, during which the descendants of Jacquouille La Fripouille, enthusiastic revolutionaries, confiscate the castle and wealth of Godefroy de Montmirail's descendants, arrogant aristocrats who are trying to escape from France, where their lives hang in the balance.