Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Bertil Guve, Ewa Froling, Jarl Kulle The first ninety minutes of Fanny and Alexander are among the most moving ninety minutes in Ingmar Bergman’s entire oeuvre, which sounds impossible because they are, by and large, intensely joyful. No one describes Christmas at Grandmother Ekdahl’s (Gunn Wallgren) as anything other than “joyful,” and it’s… Read More Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Naked (1993)

Dir. Mike Leigh. Starring David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge In the early ’90s, Johnny (Thewlis) is an iconoclast, a true man alone whose perpetually noisy solo meanderings recall the Ancient Greeks. There’s some Diogenes in Johnny, although he is even more aimless than the original and far less likely to befriend a dog. He… Read More Naked (1993)

Mr. Turner (2014)

Dir. Mike Leigh. Starring Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey It takes a great will to make a biopic which does not lead to something. Say that Topsy-Turvy is a biopic, which I don’t know that I agree with but wouldn’t argue long about, and it is a clear case of leading up to a moment. Specifically, the movie… Read More Mr. Turner (2014)

Topsy-Turvy (1999)

Dir. Mike Leigh. Starring Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Michael Savage Some movies are perfect in the grammatical, Latin sense. Casablanca is a perfect movie. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a perfect movie. So are The Leopard, Ordet, and The Thin Red Line.  (Making a list of “perfect movies” might be a potentially fatal wormhole.) These movies accomplish: at the end,… Read More Topsy-Turvy (1999)

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook The scene that made me love Powell and Pressburger is relatively unimportant in this film. Clive Candy (Livesey) has gone to Germany to publicly denounce an avid German nationalist and a true scoundrel named Kaunitz (David Ward). Unsurprisingly, the hotheaded officer with… Read More The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Starring Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Isao Kimura Of all the lines spoken in Seven Samurai, none is more piercing than the Old Man’s (Kokuten Kodo) advice to the men who venture into the city searching for ronin. “Get hungry samurai,” he tells the little troupe. His meaning is probably limited to the literal hunger of… Read More Seven Samurai (1954)

The Master (2012)

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams In that long lull in the beginning of Gettysburg’s fourth act, there’s a throwaway scene with Hancock and Chamberlain which serves to show that Hancock is thinking about Armistead almost as much as Armistead thinks about him. Hancock asks the learned Chamberlain, a professor… Read More The Master (2012)