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. 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)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes Hitchcock does not want to show us Novak’s face straight on until he absolutely must. We see her from behind, with her hair done in the little twist in the back which of course mirrors the hurricane symbol which has come to stand in… Read More Vertigo (1958)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles Before I saw Psycho, I knew more or less what was going to happen and what the twist would be. It’s hard to find anyone with any interest in seeing Psycho for the first time who hasn’t had much the same experience. It’s not even worth a “spoilers!”… Read More Psycho (1960)
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Starring Lisbeth Movin, Thorkild Roose, Preben Lerdorff Rye Paul Schrader describes Day of Wrath as “a schizoid work of art,” for “the first half of Day of Wrath wonders if there are such supernatural things as witches; the second asks why Anne thinks she is a witch.” That’s a fair one sentence synopsis of the… Read More Day of Wrath (1943)
Dir. Bruce Robinson. Starring Paul McGann, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths Withnail and I is a spiritual successor to Brideshead Revisited, presumably where Charles and Sebastian would have ended up if Waugh had ditched Sebastian’s Catholic family but maintained the guilt. Like Charles, And-I (whose name, based on the telegram he gets, is “Marwood,” but who I think is… Read More Withnail and I (1987)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook (I definitely reserve the right to fix this one up later.) It’s interesting that Elisabet chooses silence as her escape rather than blindness. Her letter proves that she is not shy about communicating, necessarily, but more importantly it is her sight which terrifies her, forces… Read More Persona (1966)
Seeing Things Secondhand 