Dir. Steve James Like any good 20th Century icon, Roger Ebert sits on a throne of contradictions. He was half of the pair who made “Two Thumbs Up!” and a partner in reductivism, in his own way part of dumbing down the movies as much as Spielberg, Lucas, Eisner, or Katzenberg. It is also true that Ebert will… Read More Life Itself (2014)
Dir. Michael Curtiz. Starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains “They don’t make movies like [x type of movie] anymore” is more often than not the most prosaic sort of movie criticism, a “Saturday Night Live had its best cast when I was sixteen” for film fogies. Typically it’s a statement of nostalgia more… Read More The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Dir. Andrew Stanton. Starring Ellen DeGeneres, Ed O’Neill, Albert Brooks Two things stand out when we talk about why Finding Nemo is one of the best animated movies of the past thirty years. First is the episodic structure of the narrative; Finding Nemo is, like The Canterbury Tales, much more than the sum of its parts based on the characters… Read More Finding Dory (2016)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles Before I saw Psycho, I knew more or less what was going to happen and what the twist would be. It’s hard to find anyone with any interest in seeing Psycho for the first time who hasn’t had much the same experience. It’s not even worth a “spoilers!”… Read More Psycho (1960)
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Starring Lisbeth Movin, Thorkild Roose, Preben Lerdorff Rye Paul Schrader describes Day of Wrath as “a schizoid work of art,” for “the first half of Day of Wrath wonders if there are such supernatural things as witches; the second asks why Anne thinks she is a witch.” That’s a fair one sentence synopsis of the… Read More Day of Wrath (1943)
Dir. Bruce Robinson. Starring Paul McGann, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths Withnail and I is a spiritual successor to Brideshead Revisited, presumably where Charles and Sebastian would have ended up if Waugh had ditched Sebastian’s Catholic family but maintained the guilt. Like Charles, And-I (whose name, based on the telegram he gets, is “Marwood,” but who I think is… Read More Withnail and I (1987)
Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Starring Sterling Hayden, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor The camera follows people from below, through walls and rooms, through shelves and bookcases. The people – mostly men – are obscured. The camera cannot pierce everything, but we see just enough setting and just enough of people’s faces to get the point. The… Read More The Killing (1956)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Max von Sydow, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Valberg Sometimes, when I like to think modern literature or music or art is edgy, I remind myself of late medieval verse and gain some perspective. An example I’ve done some research on is the history of blood libels, expressed succinctly in “The Prioress’ Tale” from The… Read More The Virgin Spring (1960)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook (I definitely reserve the right to fix this one up later.) It’s interesting that Elisabet chooses silence as her escape rather than blindness. Her letter proves that she is not shy about communicating, necessarily, but more importantly it is her sight which terrifies her, forces… Read More Persona (1966)
Dir. Giuseppe De Santis. Starring Silvana Mangano, Doris Dowling, Vittorio Gassman The radio announcer in the beginning of the film tells us why the rice fields of northern Italy are manned entirely by women; they have faster, smaller hands. And so we are thrust into a world full of women, where men are interlopers, flinging chaos… Read More Bitter Rice (1949)
Seeing Things Secondhand 