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)
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)
Dir. Asghar Farhadi. Starring Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Farid Sajadhosseini Asghar Farhadi is a hypnotic talent. His movies have an undertow capable of sucking us in when we have surrendered ourselves too fully to the waves. Scenes first unfold realistically; a husband stays behind after a show to talk to a censor, and his wife… Read More The Salesman (2016)
Dir. Sean Baker. Starring Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, Willem Dafoe (Or, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Representation.”) On many levels, The Florida Project is a good movie, and the majority of those are technical. There are some good wallpaper shots, such as when Moonee (Prince) and her friend Jancey (Valeria Cotto) look… Read More The Florida Project (2017)
Dir. Mike Judge. Starring Ron Livingston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu Since watching Office Space for the first time, I’ve struggled to come up with a way to describe just how bad it is. The story of a bunch of nobodies being nobodies at their nothing jobs, intended as a color-by-numbers for beta males, is so terrifically dumb… Read More Office Space (1999)
Dir. David Lean. Starring Brenda De Banzie, Charles Laughton, John Mills David Lean plays two tricks on us in the first two minutes or so of Hobson’s Choice. The first has to do with the shoes. Hobson’s is a shop for boots, shoes, and clogs, proclaims the sign, and in a tracking shot we see… Read More Hobson’s Choice (1954)
Seeing Things Secondhand 