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. Delbert Mann. Starring Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Esther Minciotti Usually one should shy away from calling a movie “universal,” but there really is something universal in Marty: give people what they tell you they want, and they’ll complain about not getting enough. In Act I, Marty (Borgnine), an amiable and well-meaning butcher on the cusp of… Read More Marty (1955)
Dir. Robert Redford. Starring Timothy Hutton, Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore For a movie which places several of its most important scenes in therapy—a movie which is obsessive about getting Conrad (Hutton) to say what it is that’s been eating him up—it’s shocking that no one is willing to tell Beth (Moore), in plain English,… Read More Ordinary People (1980)
Dir. Sidney Lumet. Starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall 12 Angry Men is a magnificent fantasy. Choose your player! Juror 8 (Fonda) does enough outside research that he essentially manages to retry a case in the jury room which, if we’re honest, probably should end this movie with a mistrial as opposed to a “not… Read More 12 Angry Men (1957)
In the following talk, Tim and Matt think about the career of Paul Thomas Anderson, his movies, Phantom Thread in particular, and where he sits at what is probably the midpoint of his career. In lieu of an actual podcast, we give you this lightly edited conversation. You can find Matt’s work here. Tim: After… Read More Baumann and Burch Conversations, #2: Paul Thomas Anderson
Dir. Billy Wilder. Starring Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Ray Teal The father of the man who is trapped in an old Native American burying ground underneath “the Mountain of the Seven Vultures” is a hangdog type, one who may have doomed his son to tragedy via phrenology alone. Papa (John Berkes), or Dad, for he… Read More Ace in the Hole (1951)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Harriet Andersson, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand. Remember the first time you had a nightmare because of something you saw on a screen? Mine was when I was six years old or so. I caught an episode of Wishbone which adapted The Time Machine, and the Morlocks were honest to goodness… Read More Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin In The Seventh Seal, Max von Sydow comes across Bengt Ekerot. The knight, strong and tall with a noble face, meets Death himself, who is one of the most distinctive characters in movie history, a two-tone figure with a white face and an enormous black… Read More The Magician (1958)
Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Benoit Magimel, Annie Girardot No director on the planet has Michael Haneke’s stomach, an organ which can eat rotting meat and human shame in equal portions without so much as a gurgle. Similarly, the number of performers with Isabelle Huppert’s willingness to embrace difficult material is a small one… Read More The Piano Teacher (2001)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Bertil Guve, Ewa Froling, Jarl Kulle The first ninety minutes of Fanny and Alexander are among the most moving ninety minutes in Ingmar Bergman’s entire oeuvre, which sounds impossible because they are, by and large, intensely joyful. No one describes Christmas at Grandmother Ekdahl’s (Gunn Wallgren) as anything other than “joyful,” and it’s… Read More Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Seeing Things Secondhand 