Dir. David Cronenberg. Starring James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas This is a review of an NC-17 film and as such contains discussion of some topics which are better suited to mature readers. There’s a scene a little more than halfway through the movie which defines Crash for me, one which sticks the film’s… Read More Crash (1996)
Dir. David Lynch. Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Elise Harring, Justin Theroux It seems silly to say “spoilers” when talking about a sixteen-year-old movie, but if you haven’t seen it and you’re reading this, you should probably watch the movie instead. Tinch admitted he didn’t really know. “The new fiction is interested in language and in… Read More Mulholland Drive (2001)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes Hitchcock does not want to show us Novak’s face straight on until he absolutely must. We see her from behind, with her hair done in the little twist in the back which of course mirrors the hurricane symbol which has come to stand in… Read More Vertigo (1958)
Dir. Paul Greengrass. Starring Christian Clemenson, Khalid Abdalla, Ben Sliney Indulge me in the following thought experiment: You discover one evening, after coming home from work, that there is a friendly space alien in your home. He means you no harm, but he just wants to experience movie-watching with a human. He has studied certain aspects… Read More United 93 (2006)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles Before I saw Psycho, I knew more or less what was going to happen and what the twist would be. It’s hard to find anyone with any interest in seeing Psycho for the first time who hasn’t had much the same experience. It’s not even worth a “spoilers!”… Read More Psycho (1960)
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Starring Lisbeth Movin, Thorkild Roose, Preben Lerdorff Rye Paul Schrader describes Day of Wrath as “a schizoid work of art,” for “the first half of Day of Wrath wonders if there are such supernatural things as witches; the second asks why Anne thinks she is a witch.” That’s a fair one sentence synopsis of the… Read More Day of Wrath (1943)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Tim Robbins, Annie Ross, Julianne Moore Pesticides are being dropped on Los Angeles,and God defend the right. Julianne Moore’s character is safely inside at a concert (with Alex Trebek!), but there’s a similar motif to what you find in Safe a couple years later. Sherri (Madeleine Stowe) yells at her husband,… Read More Short Cuts (1993)
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Andrew Garfield, Tadanobu Asano, Yosuke Kubozuka Spoilers ahead. Father Rodrigues (Garfield), over the course of the film, witnesses shocking humiliation, torture, and execution. Apostasy is the least of these after a while, almost passe in the misty mountains, immaculate sand, and lovely greens of one of the most hostile environments seen… Read More Silence (2016)
Dir. Ang Lee. Starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams More than a decade later, Brokeback Mountain is undoubtedly the best American movie of 2005 and, purely from back of the napkin work, probably one of the best American movies of the aughts. It’s a movie of striking bravery simply for the topic at hand; in 2005,… Read More Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Dir. Dan Gilroy. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rene Russo Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is an enterprising American entrepreneur. Almost entirely self-trained, with the help of some business classes from the Internet, he represents the “school of hard knocks” approach to building a company. Through a combination of dogged persistence, on-scene training, hard work, and a… Read More Nightcrawler (2014)
Seeing Things Secondhand 