Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin “You know Hitler?” “Hitler, yes.” Emmi (Mira) asks Ali (ben Salem) that question twice in this film. The first time, it’s the same night she’s met Ali. They’re sitting at her dinette maybe a couple of hours after they met for the… Read More Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
Dir. Peter Jackson. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen. The Fellowship of the Ring – Plot As long as narrative fiction remains, there will always be a need for strong plots. John Gardner has been paraphrased as saying that there are only two plots in literature: “someone goes on a journey” or “a stranger… Read More Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Dir. Ridley Scott. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young The opening shots of Blade Runner are a watershed moment, every bit as essential to the canon of opening scenes as Star Wars or Clockwork Orange or The Searchers. It is a perfect establishing shot, so much more than “look at this building we’re in.” It sets a tone for the entire… Read More Blade Runner (1982)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Ronee Blakley, Henry Gibson, Michael Murphy To me, the most remarkable thing about Nashville is that it places the American id not in New York City or Los Angeles, nor Boston or Texas or DC, but in Tennessee. It has the audacity to presume that something interesting has happened away from… Read More Nashville (1975)
Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli The Wages of Fear is a two and a half hour movie. I was surprised at the length, knowing what I knew about it before viewing for the first time: some guys have to haul nitroglycerine across some hazardous terrain, and some obvious problems ensue.… Read More The Wages of Fear (1953)
Dir. Errol Morris Colloquially, it’s the documentary that released an innocent man from prison; it’s one of those cases about art both affecting and effecting life, sort of the reverse of Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley, Jr. being inspired by Nashville or Taxi Driver. That Randall Dale Adams could be freed from his life sentence (after having… Read More The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Dir. Billy Wilder. Starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Nancy Olson One of my favorite scenes in Sunset Boulevard, far and away the most shocking of the bunch, is the scene where Joe (Holden) has just snuck back to the Desmond estate after a writing session with Betty (Olson); Max, the butler (Erich von Stroheim), is hiding… Read More Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring I have been vexed occasionally in the past year because I wanted to write something about a Powell and Pressburger film but couldn’t think of a good way to do it; as a general rule I don’t like to talk about what… Read More The Red Shoes (1948)
Dir. Joe Wright. Starring James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan In the past twenty years, I think moviegoers’ penchant for a twist ending has become stronger. People have always loved having that “Whoa!” moment at the end of a film – Vertigo and Psycho both indulge here – but since The Usual Suspects I think our appetites have been… Read More Atonement (2007)
Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Burghart Klaußner, Christian Friedel, Susanne Lothar There’s a scene fairly early in The White Ribbon where the schoolteacher, fishing for trout, sees one of his students – Martin, the pastor’s eldest son, maybe twelve or thirteen years old – walking on the rail of a wooden bridge high above the stream. If he fell,… Read More The White Ribbon (2009)
Seeing Things Secondhand 