Dir. Bruce Beresford. Starring Jack Thompson, Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown There may not be a more difficult and potent question than, “What responsibility do I have for my actions when I am compelled to do unjust things?” Breaker Morant, wisely, does not try to convince us of the innocence of Morant (Woodward), Handcock (Brown), and Witton… Read More Breaker Morant (1980)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand Dinner is wine, fish, vegetables, bread, butter. Eva (Ullmann) and Jan (von Sydow) sit outside on a bench underneath a tree, not so far underneath the tree that many shadows fall on them. This scene looks primarily at Eva over Jan’s shoulder. He frequently… Read More Shame (1968)
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Stergioglou, Mary Tsoni. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Starring James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo. I don’t think anyone besides crusty parents and out-of-touch principals ever denies that growing up is difficult, and even then those people only exist in the pictures. Certainly this is the premise of Rebel Without a Cause,… Read More Dogtooth (2009) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. To wit: a girl, goaded on by her parents, accidentally enters a world where spirits are visible and not always nice; where her gluttonous parents are turned into pigs and left on the edge of slaughter for days; where she must fight for a job just to be allowed to stay, where… Read More Spirited Away (2001)
Dir. Roman Polanski. Starring Adrien Brody, Ed Stoppard, Frank Finlay “It’s a funny time to say this, but” Wladyslaw (Brody) begins to say to his sister Halina (Jessica Kate Mayer) as they walk to the cattle cars which will take his family away from Warsaw. “What?” she says. “I wish I knew you better,” he… Read More The Pianist (2002)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Harriet Andersson, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand. Remember the first time you had a nightmare because of something you saw on a screen? Mine was when I was six years old or so. I caught an episode of Wishbone which adapted The Time Machine, and the Morlocks were honest to goodness… Read More Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin In The Seventh Seal, Max von Sydow comes across Bengt Ekerot. The knight, strong and tall with a noble face, meets Death himself, who is one of the most distinctive characters in movie history, a two-tone figure with a white face and an enormous black… Read More The Magician (1958)
Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Benoit Magimel, Annie Girardot No director on the planet has Michael Haneke’s stomach, an organ which can eat rotting meat and human shame in equal portions without so much as a gurgle. Similarly, the number of performers with Isabelle Huppert’s willingness to embrace difficult material is a small one… Read More The Piano Teacher (2001)
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)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Allan Edwall There’s not much sympathy left in the world for Tomas Ericsson (Bjornstrand). Surely that must have been true, to some extent, in the ’60s, but it is all the more accurate five decades on. Tomas is financially stable. He is a practitioner of an old… Read More Winter Light (1963)
Seeing Things Secondhand 