Dir. Daniel Mann. Starring Shirley Booth, Burt Lancaster, Terry Moore I’m not an alcoholic, and if there have been alcoholics in my life I couldn’t name them. I couldn’t say whether or not it’s likely that an alcoholic’s first bender in a year would end in him brandishing a knife at his wife, although one… Read More Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)
Dir. Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Starring Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Christelle Cornil Arguably the greatest moment in one of the greatest movies ever made, Three Colors: Blue, comes when Juliette Binoche sees the baby mice in her apartment and knows that she’s supposed to exterminate them. A woman grieving is given the responsibility to… Read More Two Days, One Night (2014)
Dir. Scott Z. Burns. Starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Maura Tierney Dan Jones (Driver) is determined to see his report come out “the right way.” It’s what he tells a New York Times reporter (Matthew Rhys, for the first time in his career meeting someone in secret without wearing a ridiculous wig) when it looks like… Read More The Report (2019)
Dir. Bong Joon-ho. Starring Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam Spoilers below, for a movie that, even in the mind of a “spoilers are meaningless” reviewer, kind of works better without knowing anything. In August 1914, a servant killed seven people: one was the mistress of the house, two were her children, and the other… Read More Parasite (2019)
Dir. Alex Garland. Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander Dir. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin There are two things which really stand out about Free Solo. The first is that El Capitan is really tall, and the second is that Alex Honnold is not a likable person. I don’t want to pile on the guy, because… Read More Ex Machina (2015) and Free Solo (2018)
Dir. Darren Aronofksy. Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis There is no movie which I have a harder time distancing myself from than Black Swan, not because I love it so much or because I saw it when I was young, but because it had such a powerful effect on me when I saw… Read More Black Swan (2010)
Dir. Michael Powell. Starring Carl Boehm, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley Cats, for the most part, don’t like citrus scents. Making your couch smell like lemon, for example, will reduce the cat’s desire to climb it, scratch it, or otherwise kill it. I know about this because I’ve tried it on my cat before (who is… Read More Peeping Tom (1960)
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. 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. Ang Lee. Starring Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall Put everything else about the movie down for a second, because I promise we’ll get to it, but we have to begin with Suraj Sharma. In his first ever film appearance, Sharma was, before he even turned twenty, asked to be the only corporeal thing… Read More Life of Pi (2012)
Seeing Things Secondhand 