Dir. John Ford. Starring Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Walter Brennan Frank Capra returned to Hollywood from military service and made It’s a Wonderful Life, a story about a man who is certain that his life, overflowing with instances of quiet sacrifice, has come to nothing. William Wyler returned to Hollywood from military service and made… Read More My Darling Clementine (1946)
Dir. Eric Rohmer. Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Francoise Fabian, Marie-Christine Barrault Pascal even condemned mathematics at the end of his life, Jean-Louis (Trintignant) says. He thought it was just another way to get unnecessarily distracted, a great temptation that pulls the mind away from faith in God. Nobody in the room, Jean-Louis included, seems to think… Read More My Night at Maud’s (1969)
Dir. Danny Boyle. Starring Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner I’m not a drug user, nor have I ever been. Movies about drug use overwhelmingly bore me, I guess, because I have no point of reference. I’ve ignored Trainspotting for many years largely because I couldn’t imagine finding a movie about heroin addicts interesting, and… Read More Trainspotting (1996)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe When he says the following words, the Knight (von Sydow) has just been fooled by Death (Bengt Ekerot), who was playacting as a priest at confession. Even though he has just given away an exceptional strategy in the chess game that will decide whether… Read More The Seventh Seal (1957)
Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring the entire population of Austin, Texas, but not nearly enough Butthole Surfers. Dir. Nicholas Roeg. Starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, David Gulpilil Do you have a favorite drip in Jackson Pollock’s Full Fathom Five? Does one of the nails he hammered into his canvas stand out? It’s much the same in Slacker, an… Read More Slacker (1990) and Walkabout (1971)
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Stergioglou, Mary Tsoni. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Starring James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo. I don’t think anyone besides crusty parents and out-of-touch principals ever denies that growing up is difficult, and even then those people only exist in the pictures. Certainly this is the premise of Rebel Without a Cause,… Read More Dogtooth (2009) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Dir. Bill Morrison. Before anything else, this movie is a ghost story. There are a thousand and one facts to be learned in Dawson City: Frozen Time, a documentary which is rich with knowledge but never didactic. Many of them are part sad and part funny: take, for example, that in the first nine years of… Read More Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)
Dir. Roman Polanski. Starring Natassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson Dir. Delbert Mann. Starring David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth Two scenes from Tess, one of the great movies of the 1970s, made me wonder what the movie would have been like in another director’s hands. When Angel (Firth) returns from Brazil, with a shaggier beard… Read More Tess (1979) and Separate Tables (1958)
Dir. Nicholas Ray. Starring Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, Howard Da Silva A woman is like a dog, Keechie (O’Donnell) tells Bowie (Granger) one night. I knew a dog who lost his master and refused to eat food from anyone else’s hand, would let no one pet him. It is a humiliating comparison, and Keechie is… Read More They Live by Night (1948)
Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. To wit: a girl, goaded on by her parents, accidentally enters a world where spirits are visible and not always nice; where her gluttonous parents are turned into pigs and left on the edge of slaughter for days; where she must fight for a job just to be allowed to stay, where… Read More Spirited Away (2001)
Seeing Things Secondhand 