Oscar-nominated as Best Foreign Language Film from France, A Prophet is a prison film like The Godfather is a gangster film. Meaning this knockout punch of a thriller surpasses its trappings to speak in a universal language about the ways power corrupts the human condition. Newcomer Tahar Rahim is astounding as Malik, 19, an illiterate Arab who begins serving six years by bootlicking César (Niels Arestrup), an imprisoned Corsican crime boss. César tests Mailk by forcing him to kill a fellow Muslim prisoner. Arestrup is altogether remarkable as a Dr. Frankenstein outmaneuvered by the monster he helps to create. Director Jacques Audiard (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) scores a triumph of the highest order with the defiant poetry of his vision. A Prophet is a new crime classic.

“IRM”

Fashioned to mimic the sound of a magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, "IRM" (the French designation for the brain scan) grew out of Gainsbourg’s love of the sound of the clickety-clack of medical machinery. The IRM album project also marked the fulfillment of two goals for the singer: to document a traumatic experience, and to record an album with Beck. Though her co-creator and producer didn’t necessarily know the details of her water-skiing accident and resulting cerebral hemorrhage (which lead to the IRM of the song's title), he somehow knew how to handle the material. "Beck had a way of guessing what I was thinking and feeling without me telling him," said Gainsbourg. "We never discussed these things explicitly."