The title character, played by French rocker Johnny Halliday, is a hard-nosed, increasingly hard-pressed hood. In town for a heist, he accidentally meets a reclusive, poetically inclined teacher (Jean Rochefort). The former moves into the latter's house and each comes to want the other's life, with results that are wry, sad and instructive in the way good French melodramas, from Pepe Le Moko to Breathless, once routinely were. Director Patrice Leconte remembers, and recreates the old black magic with stunning intelligence and wit.
Epic times call for epic art, and nothing moved us more than The Return of the King. Other things we loved: Louis Vuitton, William Boyd and BBC's The Office And to the Atlanta group OutKast, we say "Stank you very much!"