Modern- Day Movies JLG Actually Liked, There Aren’t Many

In a recent post, I had the assumption that the late Jean-Luc Godard basically hated most 21st century films and filmmakers. I had never really heard him praising anything from this era. His criticism of David Lynch’s films had kind of sealed it for me.

This piqued my curiosity, which directors and films, if any, had Godard admired in his later years. And so, I started reading. There was his adoration for Kiarostami, but other sources confirmed that he also praised older works from Coppola, De Palma, Scorsese (kind of), Warhol, Cassavetes, Emshwiller, Brakhage, Fassbinder, and even Korine.

It's safe to assume Godard was a fan of Woody Allen as well, given that he cast Allen as himself in one of his movies; In a “King Lear” cameo, Allen could be seen safety-pinning strips of film together, and then leaping into a pile of them.

During a nine-film series Godard guest-programmed in Le Havre in 2004, around the time of the “Notre Musique” release, he had good things to say about Vincent Gallo’s “The Brown Bunny”, and Alain Guiraudie's “Sunshine for the Poor.”

Reading through The Future(s) of Film: Three Interviews 2000/01, Godard mentions that he "liked quite a lot" Samira Makhmalbaf's “The Apple.” Godard also expressed "hate" for the films of Joel and Ethan Coen.

In that same book, Godard admits to liking Shyamalan's “The Sixth Sense,” of all things. Later on, he offers some muted praise for Sam Mendes' “American Beauty” ("not bad in certain respects"). Although, he also criticizes both films for being merely "illustrations" of scripts. "The real romantic isn't there," he writes.

Godard added that he liked “the two minutes of American Beauty where it becomes a Cassavetes film.” Whatever that means.

Godard was infamously a Jerry Lewis fan, going so far as to compare Lewis to a painter rather than a director in a Dick Cavett interview. He wrote in Cahiers du Cinema, "Jerry Lewis is the only American director who makes progressive films. He is superior to Chaplin and Keaton.”

After some more digging around the internet, I found out that one of Godard's favorite movies is apparently Satyajit Ray's “Charulata.”