Dir. Yasujiro Ozu. Starring Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Setsuko Hara I’ve never seen a movie which wanted me to notice the power lines as much as Tokyo Story, and the more you look for them the more you find them. Ozu doesn’t need to work very hard to differentiate Onomichi, the quiet town where Shukichi (Ryu)… Read More Tokyo Story (1953)
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Luis Guzman “This is Barry,” Barry (Sandler) says whenever he picks up the phone. It’s one of those friendly touches one adds to whatever entrepreneurs call bedside manner – “Yes, ma’am, there is a real live human on the other end of this line!” – and it’s… Read More Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Dir. Robin Hardy. Starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland (Featured image links here.) You go to see a movie called The Wicker Man. You sit through a movie which is occasionally uncomfortable and then incredibly funny and then cringe again at something else. I think the champion example is that guy who shows Howie… Read More The Wicker Man (1973)
Dir. Jacques Tourneur. Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas Picture links back here Out of the Past is a film which doesn’t work well unless you believe with a full heart in the inevitable stupidity of men, a stupidity which is born out of arrogance and self-importance, and which is compounded by an inability… Read More Out of the Past (1947)
Dir. Woody Allen. Starring Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello (Featured image links here) In the past five or six years, I think we’ve been very anxious to find movies which remind us somehow of the past, to lighten our own sort of pessimism about the world at large, and to crown these films as… Read More The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes Helen (Embeth Davidtz) can’t figure it out. Her employer, the Nazi commandant Amon Goeth (Fiennes), beats her. Yet others he kills without compunction; she tells Schindler (Neeson) a story about how he went through a group of his Jewish inmates at the Plaszow camp and… Read More Schindler’s List (1993)
Dir. John Huston. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, Walter Huston Almost as soon as Dobbs (Bogart) gets out of Tampico with some money and supplies in his back pocket, he begins the downhill slide which will lead to murder, theft, and betrayal (dun-dun-dun!). There is one scene, though, which keeps Dobbs from becoming a mere… Read More The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, Ben Johnson, Maureen O’Hara In The Battle of Midway, John Ford appears to have won a bet he made with someone that he couldn’t fit every patriotic American song into a movie. Only a few minutes of the documentary are really about the battle itself; no small part of it… Read More Rio Grande (1950)
Dir. Karel Reisz. Starring Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Hilton McRae Movies don’t usually come with morals (glory to God in the highest for that), but occasionally one comes across a film which contains within itself a parable. The French Lieutenant’s Woman is such a film, which uses the story of a pair of protagonists to create… Read More The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Gunnar Bjornstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Ulla Jacobsson Picture links back here Out of all the Bergman movies I’ve seen by now – this one makes seven – this is the first one I’ve watched and thought to myself, “None of these people are too bright.” There are characters here and there… Read More Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
