Dir. Laszlo Nemes. Starring Geza Rohrig, Levente Molnar, Todd Charmont Son of Saul makes the right stylistic choice just about every time, except once when I think its characters say too much. It’s most of the way through the movie by now. Saul (Rohrig) has made maybe a dozen profoundly irrational choices in his hellbent effort… Read More Son of Saul (2015)
Dir. Pedro Almodovar. Starring Carmen Maura, Maria Barranco, Antonio Banderas Picture links back here From a narrative perspective, it is a minor miracle that Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown can add characters at the breakneck speed that it does without losing track of the plot or slowing it down even a little. In under ninety… Read More Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
Dir. Ken Loach. Starring Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham The Wind That Shakes the Barley raises an interesting question: how, within a revolutionary movement, do we distinguish from the men of principle and the men who want power? It is certainly not apparent at the outset that Teddy O’Donovan (Delaney) will turn heel. When Teddy… Read More The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
Dir. Noah Baumbach. Starring Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg, Laura Linney. (Featured image links here.) The Squid and the Whale is scathing when it wants to be, which is just about all the time. For a time, Walt (Eisenberg) is the most odious of the family, a teenager who deserves the kind of tongue-lashing that Roald Dahl could… Read More The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Dir. Andrea Arnold. Starring Sasha Lane, Shia LeBeouf, Riley Keough (Featured image links here.) Krystal (Keough) is a master of the power move. Throughout American Honey she manages to manipulate, cow, impress, and otherwise command a group of a dozen or so teenagers/twenty-somethings with little more than magazine subscriptions. Her game is the mag crew, which… Read More American Honey (2016)
Dir. Howard Hawks. Starring Cary Grant, Thomas Mitchell, Jean Arthur (Featured image links here.) Throughout the film, Hawks is careful not to use close-ups with much frequency. His shots are the long shots which allow us to marvel at the model airplanes which rise and fall from the little airstrip, and the American shots which… Read More Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Dir. Douglas Sirk. Starring Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, Susan Kohner (Featured image links here.) Sarah Jane Johnson (Kohner) can trace her future in two directions. The first path keeps her with her loving, practically perfect mother, Annie (Moore). Annie’s friendship, which borders ungracefully on mistress/maid with a successful actress named Lora Meredith (Turner), will almost certainly… Read More Imitation of Life (1959)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer There is a sadness at the heart of The Social Network which is attractive to me because so much of it is self-inflicted. When we recall the movie, we will no doubt remember the warmly lit but definitely dour boardrooms where the depositions take place, and we… Read More The Social Network (2010)
Dir. Gus Van Sant. Starring John Robinson, Alex Frost, Elias McConnell Elephant is one of the great high school movies ever made because more than any other high school movie I’ve seen it nails the look and feel of what high schools are like. The affluent white high school that the students of this film are… Read More Elephant (2003)
Dir. Robin Hardy. Starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland (Featured image links here.) You go to see a movie called The Wicker Man. You sit through a movie which is occasionally uncomfortable and then incredibly funny and then cringe again at something else. I think the champion example is that guy who shows Howie… Read More The Wicker Man (1973)
Seeing Things Secondhand 