Dir. Ari Aster. Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne Never trust Ann Dowd! I don’t watch that much television, and even I know never to trust Ann Dowd! Anyway, the movie I’ve seen Hereditary compared to most frequently is Rosemary’s Baby, which I’m not sure I understand. Granted, these are two horror movies without any real jump… Read More Hereditary (2018)
Dir. Dominic Cooke. Starring Saiorse Ronan, Billy Howle, Adrian Scarborough On Chesil Beach might even have been Atonement but for two things. (It is probably not fair of me to compare them, but Ian McEwan, sad lovers, I doubt I’m the first one here.) First, Ronan and Howle don’t have the power of Knightley and… Read More On Chesil Beach (2018)
Dir. Zoltan Korda. Starring Ralph Richardson, John Clements, C. Aubrey Smith The shot above is the movie’s thesis. A storm of ferocious, enthusiastic cavalry troops charging en masse but not in formation, meets a disciplined enemy firing with superior weaponry from their thin red line. (Fear not: the British square was used earlier in the… Read More The Four Feathers (1939)
Dir. Ken Russell. Starring Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Michael Gothard It’s hard to find a full cut of The Devils. The one I watched on Filmstruck lacks a couple of the more controversial sequences, and I had to go fishing for others. If the movie were made today, I’m sure people would be upset about… Read More The Devils (1971)
Dir. Rainer Sarnet. Starring Rea Lest, Jorgen Liik, Taavi Eelmaa In the Wild West, they had tumbleweeds rolling across the desert scrub. In the 19th Century Estonia of November, they have kratts clanking in front of a town’s single manor. Made of three scythes and a cow’s skull, one of these kratts makes its way… Read More November (2017)
Dir. Sean Baker. Starring Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, Willem Dafoe (Or, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Representation.”) On many levels, The Florida Project is a good movie, and the majority of those are technical. There are some good wallpaper shots, such as when Moonee (Prince) and her friend Jancey (Valeria Cotto) look… Read More The Florida Project (2017)
Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske. Starring Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Verna Felton The story of Alice is one of the most frequently visited in English-language cinema, and the problem of how to represent the immense strangeness of her Wonderland is just about as vexing. How does one adequately represent the world beyond the… Read More Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Dir. Alfonso Cuaron. Starring Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris The Blue Marble, probably taken by Jack Schmitt aboard Apollo 17, has had a profound effect on the many millions of people who viewed it. Carl Sagan, twenty-odd years later, saw Earth from even farther away in the Pale Blue Dot. Everything you have ever… Read More Gravity (2013)
Dir. George Scribner. Starring Joey Lawrence, Dom DeLuise, Billy Joel The first five minutes of Oliver & Company are indebted to the opening minutes of two of its predecessors. Eleven years earlier, The Rescuers used still images of a message in a bottle, sometimes enduring a storm and sometimes reaching a pier in warm yellow… Read More Oliver and Company (1988)
Dir. Penny Marshall. Starring Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Jared Rushton Over the course of a year, three separate comedies put women at the upper echelons of late ’80s business and simultaneously ensnared them in love triangles. The world of business and work entwine each other until there is no clear separation between the profitable and… Read More Big (1988)
Seeing Things Secondhand 