Dir. Richard Attenborough. Starring Ben Kingsley, Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey Two scenes in Gandhi – a movie which, at just over three hours, is less lengthy than its reputation – have always stood out to me as terribly impressive and, more importantly, as filmic blueprints for fighting back against stronger powers. One of them is in… Read More Gandhi (1982)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Roger Livesey, David Niven, Kim Hunter The second scene of the film, the one where Peter Carter (Niven, who will always be the guy who got off the best burn in Oscar history) descends about as slowly as possible in a crashing airplane, is surprisingly moving. The surprise… Read More A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Halvar Bjork Bergman is still Bergman in this movie, and I have no doubt that someone else has used that line to describe Autumn Sonata before and I don’t care. Ingmar Bergman is still addicted to close-ups, still putting our cheeks to the hot stove of emotional upheaval for… Read More Autumn Sonata (1978)
Dir. Milos Forman. Starring Hana Brejchova, Vladimir Pucholt, Milada Jezkova Watch enough movies or TV, especially the recent stuff, and you start to get used to the idea of young people being played by…other young people, I guess, but people who aren’t anything like the age group they’re portraying. Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield were… Read More Loves of a Blonde (1965)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Maggie Smith, Kelly Macdonald, Ryan Philippe In retrospect, it was a mistake to make Gosford Park a murder mystery. What makes Nashville and Short Cuts effective is the unbelievably patient burn among small pockets of people which culminates in an event which no person can ignore. In Short Cuts, it’s the earthquake that no one can escape from;… Read More Gosford Park (2001)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin We are forced to confront ourselves and our pasts only when they are placed directly in front of us and we are told, “Look!” More than anything, I find this message at the heart of Wild Strawberries, and it is a heart that is alternately warm… Read More Wild Strawberries (1957)
Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman Llewyn Davis (Isaac) has made an accidental habit of picking up orange cats. (I love cats. I confess to some slight distraction when they were on screen. Also, this movie has two cats, so by the standard the Academy set after The Artist, and… Read More Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Before going into straight review territory on this blog, I used to spend a lot more of my time making lists; I blame Buzzfeed for taking the joy out of the format. But recently, while I was reading Ben Lindbergh’s recent post at The Ringer about whether or not a movie should be remade, I… Read More Remakes I’m Asking For
Dir. Wim Wenders. Starring Bruno Ganz, Peter Falk, Solveig Dommartin I haven’t been to Berlin in nearly ten years now, and the Berlin that Wenders and company depict here is a vastly different one than I saw. For one thing, the Wall still stands; one scene, as if to emphasize the non-reality of the actors… Read More Wings of Desire (1987)
Dir. Alejandro G. Inarritu. Starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone The star of Birdman is Emmanuel Lubezski, the cinematographer who at this writing has won three consecutive Oscars for Best Cinematography in three seriously stylish films: Gravity, Birdman, and The Revenant. Technically speaking, this is one of the most remarkable films of the decade. Edits are hidden so that… Read More Birdman (2014)
Seeing Things Secondhand 