Dir. Yasujiro Ozu. Starring Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Haruko Sugimura The Abilene paradox posits that in a group of people, it is entirely possible that a group of people can collectively engage in an activity even though all of them hold some reservations about so doing. The original example features four people who decide to… Read More Late Spring (1949)
Dir. Bradley Cooper. Starring Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott We could talk about spoilers, but the concept for this movie is eighty years old, and let’s face it, we all know what happens. The politics of A Star Is Born are what we might euphemistically call “old-fashioned.” They are the politics of whites in… Read More A Star Is Born (2018)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Christian Barbier Melville, whose track record with the French Resistance had a great influence on his future filmmaking career (not least of which was his name, a nom de guerre from the guerre itself), frequently begins his films with epigraphs. Not all of them work for me—looking… Read More Army of Shadows (1969)
Dir. Paddy Considine. Starring Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan Three British movies of 2011 far outshine the rest of that year: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Shame, and We Need to Talk About Kevin. The first is a movie about the trail cruelty leaves, the way a betrayal goes on to damage people far outside… Read More Tyrannosaur (2011)
Dir. Peter Ustinov. Starring Terence Stamp, Peter Ustinov, Robert Ryan There are women in Lawrence of Arabia, even if one hears little of them and sees even less. Billy Budd, released in the same year, is genuinely devoid of women. They are a foreign presence at sea, though “foreign” may be too weak a word; “alien” would… Read More Billy Budd (1962)
Original image links back here Tim: It’s been like, four months since our last music conversation. And we return today to talk about Coheed and Cambria, who you probably know best as the guys who roasted Antonin Scalia. (The Decemberists one really feels like it happened like, last week.) Matt: That Scalia roast is… Read More Baumann and Burch Conversations #10: Coheed and Cambria
Dir. Spike Lee. Starring Edward Norton, Rosario Dawson, Barry Pepper What makes a teacher kiss his seventeen-year-old student? What leads a father to contemplate a new life for his son bound for a seven-year prison term, fantasizing about going on the run together? What makes a Wall Street analyst look himself in the mirror after… Read More 25th Hour (2002)
Dir. Ken Russell. Starring Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Michael Gothard It’s hard to find a full cut of The Devils. The one I watched on Filmstruck lacks a couple of the more controversial sequences, and I had to go fishing for others. If the movie were made today, I’m sure people would be upset about… Read More The Devils (1971)
Dir. Rainer Sarnet. Starring Rea Lest, Jorgen Liik, Taavi Eelmaa In the Wild West, they had tumbleweeds rolling across the desert scrub. In the 19th Century Estonia of November, they have kratts clanking in front of a town’s single manor. Made of three scythes and a cow’s skull, one of these kratts makes its way… Read More November (2017)
Dir. Pawel Pawlikowski. Starring Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik In a black-and-white film, throwaway comments about eye or hair color are distracting at best, like little asides to the audience whispering that yes, She is pretty. In practice they recall Sonya’s lament of the fate of ugly women: “When a woman is ugly, people say… Read More Ida (2013)
Seeing Things Secondhand 