Dir. Roland Joffe. Starring Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Robert De Niro Father Gabriel (Irons) is the only European Jesuit priest above the waterfall who is unwilling to fight for the Guarani with violence. Rodrigo (De Niro), whose skill with violence is unquestioned, comes to Gabriel to be blessed before joining the battle. “I cannot bless… Read More The Mission (1986)
Dir. Peter Weir. Starring Helen Morse, Margaret Nelson, Rachel Roberts More than forty years later it’s nearly impossible to come to Picnic at Hanging Rock without knowing that you’ll not receive satisfaction from the movie, at least in terms of the plot. That’s not to say that some kind of satisfaction – or at the very least… Read More Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Dir. Jacques Demy. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Anne Vernon, Nino Castelnuevo Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. Starring Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Mohamed Ben Kassen Guy (Castelnuevo) has bad news for Genevieve (Deneuve): he’s being sent to Algeria, and at sixteen she is certain that she will die waiting for him. At this moment, she has already conceived the… Read More The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Dir. Asghar Farhadi. Starring Peyman Moaadi, Sarina Farhadi, Sareh Bayat I adore the first scene of this movie, because it is so terribly frank. The room itself is bare, with gray walls and handsome, but simple, wooden chairs. Nader (Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are a married couple in front of a judge. She wants… Read More A Separation (2011)
Dir. David Lynch. Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Elise Harring, Justin Theroux It seems silly to say “spoilers” when talking about a sixteen-year-old movie, but if you haven’t seen it and you’re reading this, you should probably watch the movie instead. Tinch admitted he didn’t really know. “The new fiction is interested in language and in… Read More Mulholland Drive (2001)
Dir. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. Starring Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson I vividly remember where I was the first time I saw a commercial for How to Train Your Dragon. I was a freshman in college and I was on my top bunk; my roommate was on the bottom one at the time, and… Read More How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Dir. David Cronenberg. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris It’s almost too bad that A History of Violence isn’t a French movie about a reformed mobster from the tough streets of Marseille who escapes to the Massif Central and starts a family, because then the title would make a little more sense. In English, the term… Read More A History of Violence (2005)
Dir. Michael Mann. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Steven Waddington What if Michael Mann is responsible for the best journalism flick of the ’90s, the best cop movie of the ’90s, and the best western of the ’90s? I don’t know that there’s much argument that The Insider and Heat fill those first two niches, but there may be… Read More The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Starring Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, Marie Kean In the very, very early days of motion pictures, the novelty of a picture in motion was the primary reason for an audience to come see it. Actors were not actors so much as models, posing in front of the real star: the camera. Only two directors… Read More Barry Lyndon (1975)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois Many people have thought about McCabe & Mrs. Miller before I got here, and they each land on their own sense of what is most memorable and striking about the movie. The right answer is probably, yes, DP Vilmos Zsigmond’s work in flashing the negative to… Read More McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
Seeing Things Secondhand 