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. 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. Robert Altman. Starring Tim Robbins, Annie Ross, Julianne Moore Pesticides are being dropped on Los Angeles,and God defend the right. Julianne Moore’s character is safely inside at a concert (with Alex Trebek!), but there’s a similar motif to what you find in Safe a couple years later. Sherri (Madeleine Stowe) yells at her husband,… Read More Short Cuts (1993)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann Cries and Whispers is planted in a middle ground between the theatrical and the cinematic. As a play, it works for the uncanny focus on its primary characters, the rapidly understandable emotions each character holds back, the dramatic moments of pain, the rich setting in absolutely… Read More Cries and Whispers (1972)
Dir. Ang Lee. Starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams More than a decade later, Brokeback Mountain is undoubtedly the best American movie of 2005 and, purely from back of the napkin work, probably one of the best American movies of the aughts. It’s a movie of striking bravery simply for the topic at hand; in 2005,… Read More Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier “I have a competition in me,” Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) says. “I want no one else to succeed.” He’s speaking to his brother, Henry (who, it will turn it, is neither his brother nor a Henry), a man he’s only met earlier that day. With only… Read More There Will Be Blood (2007)
Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, John Travolta Matt and I accidentally/jointly named Pulp Fiction the greatest movie in American history when we did our podcast on the matter a little while back. It’s certainly the greatest movie released in my lifetime (not literally, but essentially, since 1991). And as we recede further and… Read More Pulp Fiction (1994)
Dir. Luchino Visconti. Starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale I don’t know that there are many other movies like The Leopard, at least not from the past fifty years. The Leopard would be able to function as a silent movie. Although the three hours are filled with dialogue, much of it seems as decorative as the frescoes… Read More The Leopard (1963)
Dir. Elem Klimov. Starring Aleksey Kravchenko, Vladas Bagdonas, Olga Mironova Come and See lays animals into the picture in ways that I don’t think any other war movie even attempts to do. Consider the turkeys which get full camera focus in Flor’s house, or the cow that Roubej gives his life to steal. Think of the… Read More Come and See (1985)
Dir. Steve McQueen. Starring Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Brian Milligan After the debut of 12 Years a Slave, the charges that McQueen’s direction – his long takes, his still camera, his artful establishing shots – was “gimmicky” or, more inscrutably, “distracted from the film” began to proliferate. I’ve always thought that was primarily a response to… Read More Hunger (2008)
Seeing Things Secondhand 