Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson Johan (Josephson) and Marianne (Ullmann) are hosting a pair of old friends for dinner. Peter (Jan Malmsjo) and Katarina (Andersson) belong very much to the same social stratum as our heroes. Johan is a professor and Marianne a lawyer specializing in family law, which boils… Read More Scenes from a Marriage S1E1, “Innocence and Panic”
Dir. Terry Zwigoff. Starring Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, Scarlett Johansson While I was in college, one of my professors referred to a mutual acquaintance as an “LSEOR” (ell-see-or), which stands for “low self-esteem overreactor.” Enid (Birch) must be able to see the relevance of that acronym to her personality, but the true LSEOR would overreact… Read More Ghost World (2001)
Dir. James Ivory. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox Someone famous and distant is supposed to have said, “Hominem unius libri timeo,” or, “I fear the man of one book.” The phrase is pleasingly ambiguous. One might fear the man of “one book” because he has great learning in a subject which outstrips our… Read More The Remains of the Day (1993)
Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy “I know, because I’ve actually already lived through this night,” Jesse (Hawke) says to Celine (Delpy) eighteen years after his first night with her. “I’m a time traveler.” Jesse’s verbal play isn’t delivered with a grin but with more grim intensity, surely, than he means to let… Read More Before Trilogy: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight (2013)
Dir. Michael Gordon. Starring Jose Ferrer, Ralph Clanton, Mala Parsons Cyrano de Bergerac is a really tricky play to adapt, more or less as is, from stage to screen. The 1950 edition is sad proof of that difficulty. The play itself is filled with monologues and excessively verbose language as well as a setting which,… Read More Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
Dir. Alexander Payne. Starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen One of the beats Jack (Church) hits with great frequency is the beat about how Miles (Giamatti) is in the way of his own happiness. The depression and anxiety Miles deals with badly might be there, but Jack is sure that more of what’s… Read More Sideways (2004)
Dir. Lynne Ramsay. Starring Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell We Need to Talk About Kevin is terribly powerful. During the first half-hour, I found myself doing something which, philosophically, I am deeply opposed to: I tried to turn the movie into a single word. I thought “unsparing” might be the right word, but that’s… Read More We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
Dir. Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins In the last scene of Trouble in Paradise, which calls back to some of the funnier moments early on in the movie, Lily (Hopkins) and Gaston (Marshall) have stolen objects from one another. Lily walked out with 100,000 francs originally belonging to Madame Mariette Colet… Read More Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Dir. Noah Baumbach. Starring Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg, Laura Linney. (Featured image links here.) The Squid and the Whale is scathing when it wants to be, which is just about all the time. For a time, Walt (Eisenberg) is the most odious of the family, a teenager who deserves the kind of tongue-lashing that Roald Dahl could… Read More The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer There is a sadness at the heart of The Social Network which is attractive to me because so much of it is self-inflicted. When we recall the movie, we will no doubt remember the warmly lit but definitely dour boardrooms where the depositions take place, and we… Read More The Social Network (2010)
Seeing Things Secondhand 