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American-born French director Eugène Green is known as a practitioner of the Baroque theater technique, in particular his ability to translate that tradition into cinematic form. If that sounds like a hard sell, you’ve never seen a Eugene Green movie.

Despite their cerebral foundations (long pauses, stilted line reading), Green’s movies are characterized by dry humor and emotion that creeps into richly conceived stories. Using classic art as his backdrop, Green reshapes it into engaging new forms. “The Portuguese Nun” was a humorous look at an attempt to adapt a 17th century novel, and his marvelous “La Sapienza” followed the relatable plight of a modern architect against the backdrop of post-Renaissance architecture. Both movies manage to transform their topics into storytelling devices with unexpected twists.

With “Son of Joseph,” Green uses a 17th century biblical painting by Carvaggio to animate the contemporary tale of an angsty teen searching...

Eugène Green’s The Portuguese Nun was a gentle comic gem and his new film about a lonely boy is lovable in exactly the same way

Eugène Green is an international treasure: an American-born French film-maker who, like Manoel De Oliveira, absorbs the stylised, rarefied elegance of classical theatre and brings it to movies about the present day. The Portuguese Nun (2009) was a gem of gentle comedy, and his new drama, The Son of Joseph, has the same droll innocence and lovability. With its carefully controlled, decelerated dialogue, it is weirdly moving in just the same way. Again, it has something of Rivette or Rohmer, and like Ozu (or Wes Anderson), he uses that most eccentric technique – direct sightlines into camera.

Vincent (Victor Ezenfis) is a lonely teenage boy, alienated from his peers. We first see him walking away when a couple of charmless schoolfriends start tormenting a rat in a cage.

"A lithe, luminous film that truly 'dances about architecture,' [Eugène Green's La Sapienza] is the rare work of narrative art that can invoke philosophical problems in a manner that feels completely organic to the world it has created," finds Michael Sicinski, writing in the Notebook. But at the House Next Door, James Lattimer finds that "La Sapienza is lazily content to draw on the exact same set of formal strategies employed to more fitting effect in A Religiosa Portuguesa [2009]." Green's new film premiered in Locarno and now heads to festivals in Toronto and New York. We've got more reviews and two clips. » - David Hudson...

"A lithe, luminous film that truly 'dances about architecture,' [Eugène Green's La Sapienza] is the rare work of narrative art that can invoke philosophical problems in a manner that feels completely organic to the world it has created," finds Michael Sicinski, writing in the Notebook. But at the House Next Door, James Lattimer finds that "La Sapienza is lazily content to draw on the exact same set of formal strategies employed to more fitting effect in A Religiosa Portuguesa [2009]." Green's new film premiered in Locarno and now heads to festivals in Toronto and New York. We've got more reviews and two clips. » - David Hudson...

To celebrate the DVD release of Eugène Green's critically-acclaimed drama The Portuguese Nun (2009) - which stars Leonor Baldaque, Francisco Mozos, Diogo Dória and Ana Moreira - on 9 April, the ever-wonderful team at Artificial Eye have kindly provided us with Three DVD copies of the film to give away to our cinema-hungry readers. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook fans, so if you haven't already, head over to facebook.com/CineVueUK, 'Like' us, and then follow the instructions below.

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This week saw the release of Eugène Green's The Portuguese Nun (2009) (review here) - a fascinating, yet highly unconventional existential journey through Lisbon following an actress as she deals with issues of loneliness, love and divine will. CineVue were lucky enough to catch up for an interview with Green, a director with a clear and distinctive style, to talk to him about the film.

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To mark the release of The Portuguese Nun on DVD April 9th, Artificial Eye have given us three copies to give away. The movie is directed by Eugene Green.

One of the most critically acclaimed films of 2011 tells the story of Julie, a young French actress shooting a film in Lisbon about a 17th Century nun who is seduced by a soldier. Among the city’s enigmatic and transient inhabitants, she encounters a young Nun and the exchange between the two women changes Julie’s destiny forever.

This absorbing drama is the fourth film by the acclaimed New York-born filmmaker Eugene Green and his first to be released in the UK.

To be in with a chance of winning this great prize, simply click next to be taken to the entry form and question….

Even by arthouse standards, the French director Eugène Green's minimal, formalistic films are an acquired taste, and his latest work, which centres on a beautiful French actress in Lisbon to shoot a film version of the 18th-century novel about the affair between a nun and a French naval officer, is fairly characteristic. There are only two outright jokes, one being Green himself as the film's director, Denis Verde (ho! ho!), the other a hotel desk clerk mocking pretentious French films.

Otherwise, it's a solemn, portentous affair, dramatically, verbally and visually, where everyone talks in an uninflected manner. This does have its payoff in an oddly moving, all-night encounter in a chapel between the actress playing a nun and an authentic Portuguese religieuse, in which they discuss the nature of secular and spiritual love.

Watching the movie two days after the death of Peter Yates, the versatile British director best known for Bullitt,...

Black Swan (15)

(Darren Aronofsky, 2010, Us) Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel. 108 mins

Another tale of driven professionalism to go with Aronofsky's The Wrestler, but this goes further and gets away with more, whipping a tale of theatrical ambition into a delirious, hallucinogenic melodrama. Portman is superb as the brittle ballerina facing up to her nightmares when she lands her dream role, and between the punishing routines, her monstrous mother (Barbara Hershey) and the fever of performance, we're swept away.

Neds (18)

(Peter Mullan, 2010, UK/Fra/Ita) Conor McCarron, Martin Bell, Linda Cuthbert. 134 mins

Mullan turns his memories of 1970s Glasgow into a muscular yet compassionate youth drama. McCarron is outstanding as a bright boy whose promise is warped by brutal conditions in and out of school.

Morning Glory (12A)

(Roger Michell, 2010, Us) Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton. 107 mins

McAdams delights and Ford grouches in a breakfast TV comedy that is...

Mesmeric, subtly comic and weirdly gripping, this drama set in gorgeous Lisbon is one of the year's best. By Peter Bradshaw

Elegant, eccentric and absolutely captivating, this is simply a gem. It's a film with a heartfelt love of Lisbon – beautifully and calmly photographed – and with serene, almost eerie self-possession in its long, slow takes and stylised, decelerated speech. Director Eugène Green uses direct sightlines into camera in the manner of Ozu, and the mannered minuet of his dialogue clearly owes a good deal to Manoel de Oliveira. It produces the dream-like impression of a classical drama transplanted into a contemporary setting. Leonor Baldaque plays Julie, a French actor in Lisbon to shoot a movie based on the 17th-century tale of a nun seduced by a soldier. She becomes aware of spirits from the past arising before her and within her. Green's camera is perpetually trained on Julie's delicate face: an intense portraiture.

With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.

I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.

From a remake of the 1969 western True Grit to a delirious movie-melodrama about a ballerina hoping to play the lead in Swan Lake, there's something for all tastes here

127 Hours

Watch from between your fingers, or hide under the seat: James Franco plays a mountain climber with an awful decision to make when his arm gets trapped under an enormous boulder. This true story, directed by Danny Boyle, has had cinema audiences wincing, yelping, moaning and rocking back and forth in distress.

Out on 5 January.

The King's Speech

Awards bait it may be, but this movie is carried off with terrific panache. Colin Firth plays the unhappy George VI in 1930s Britain, crucified with shame at his stammer; Geoffrey Rush is Leonard Logue, the outspoken Australian speech therapist who is the only man who can help. Helena Bonham Carter is Queen Elizabeth (to be known, decades later, as the Queen Mother).

Out on 7 January.