Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Starring Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Isao Kimura Of all the lines spoken in Seven Samurai, none is more piercing than the Old Man’s (Kokuten Kodo) advice to the men who venture into the city searching for ronin. “Get hungry samurai,” he tells the little troupe. His meaning is probably limited to the literal hunger of… Read More Seven Samurai (1954)
Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty The following review addresses what might reasonably be referred to as animal cruelty. “All the little devils are proud of Hell,” Doc (Pleasence) mumbles by way of greeting. It’s at that moment that I knew that Wake in Fright would be strong medicine; forty-some years… Read More Wake in Fright (1971)
Dir. Jan Troell. Starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg (My review of The Emigrants, which is less the first movie in a two-part series than it is the first half of this film, is here.) “We’ll have to figure out what that means,” Karl Oskar (von Sydow) murmurs as he reads over a… Read More The New Land (1972)
I’ve completed a series of episode-by-episode reviews of the television miniseries Scenes from a Marriage. I’ve decided to make it easier to access these posts as part of a group by making this page as an index. I’ve also added a short synopsis of each episode so that you can find what you’re looking for quickly.… Read More Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Gunnel Lindblom (My thoughts on the previous episode are here.) It’s not surprising that in this final episode, more like an epilogue than an actual continuation of the plot, Johan and Marianne seem to be back together. They are no longer married. He’s married to an Anna,… Read More Scenes from a Marriage, S1E6, “In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World”
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson (My thoughts on the previous episode are here.) The windowless walls of Johan’s office are utterly bare, a bland taupe that makes the room seem close even when he’s sitting there by himself and which, as the episode carries on, makes it seem like entire setting is… Read More Scenes from a Marriage S1E5, “The Illiterates”
Dir. Alain Resnais. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Bernard Fresson Dir. Spike Jonze. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams In a sea of other people, a French actress (Riva) and a Japanese architect (Okada) fall painfully and deeply in love. That sea of other people is less the present population of Hiroshima and more… Read More Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Her (2013)
Dir. Jacques Demy. Starring Francoise Dorleac, Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Perrin When you see “Jean Barthet: Chapeaux” in the opening credits, you know that it’s going to be good if they had to put him up top. Nor do his hats disappoint! They are enormous things, like mutant butterflies in marvelous yellow and pink – in… Read More The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson (My thoughts on the previous episode are here.) “The Vale of Tears,” like “The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Rug,” acts like a ligament in the miniseries, although there’s much more change that occurs in this installment than in the second episode. “The Vale of Tears”… Read More Scenes from a Marriage S1E4, “The Vale of Tears”
Dir. Jane Campion. Starring Holly Hunter, Sam Neill, Harvey Keitel Someday, God forbid, Holly Hunter will die and everyone is going to rewatch her movies and wonder why she was not the most revered actress of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Her performances live somewhere between our retinas and our spinal columns, pulsing through… Read More The Piano (1993)
Seeing Things Secondhand 