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. Wong Kar-wai. Starring Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Rebecca Pan The smallest things are beautiful in In the Mood for Love. The smoke from the cigarettes Chow (Leung) enjoys don’t billow so much as luxuriate in midair, and in a movie which largely eschews blues, the robin’s egg color of Su’s (Cheung) typewriter stands out… Read More In the Mood for Love (2000)
Dir. Yasujiro Ozu. Starring Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Setsuko Hara I’ve never seen a movie which wanted me to notice the power lines as much as Tokyo Story, and the more you look for them the more you find them. Ozu doesn’t need to work very hard to differentiate Onomichi, the quiet town where Shukichi (Ryu)… Read More Tokyo Story (1953)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Gunnar Bjornstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Ulla Jacobsson Picture links back here Out of all the Bergman movies I’ve seen by now – this one makes seven – this is the first one I’ve watched and thought to myself, “None of these people are too bright.” There are characters here and there… Read More Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Dir. Roland Joffe. Starring Haing S. Ngor, Sam Waterston, John Malkovich The camera rarely stops moving in this film. Even when you’d expect it to sit still, it so rarely does. Most directors, I think, would keep their camera stationary when Dith Pran (Ngor) walks towards it near the film’s end. All he’s doing is… Read More The Killing Fields (1984)
Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Starring Thanapat Saisayamar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee Boonmee (Saisaymar) is a man who is fairly well-off and who, by the looks of it, is faintly doomed. His kidney is not doing well; the laborious process of draining it hasn’t been unsuccessful, but it isn’t helping him in the way it will need… Read More Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Irene Tunc Just as monster movies are often highly successful when the monster is hidden from our sight (Jaws, The Thing), so too can romances be terribly erotic when there’s absolutely no sex. Brief Encounter is such a film; it turns even the idea of a sexual liaison between the… Read More Leon Morin, Priest (1961)
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Starring Henrik Malberg, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Emil Hass Christensen Mikkel (Christensen) can tell something’s wrong while he’s speaking with the new parson (Ove Rud). He’s met Johannes (Rye), one of Mikkel’s younger brothers, who speaks slowly, harshly, as if there were some sharp metal obstacle in his throat for the words… Read More Ordet (1955)
Seeing Things Secondhand 