Categories
February 20, 2022
Miguel Llansó’s Jesus ShowsYou The Way To The Highway
Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway is a carefully blended mixture of styles and elements that seems at first to be nothing but […]
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February 13, 2022
Favorite Scenes No.27: The Last Emperor
You never know what will strike a chord and stay fixed in your memory but often it is something small and specific. When it […]
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January 30, 2022
The Films Of Niki Lindroth von Bahr
Niki Lindroth von Bahr fits right in with her Nordic peers. If you enjoy the films of Roy Anderson, Alex van Warmerdam or Jens Lien you are sure to […]
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January 16, 2022
Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog
This article does not contain any outright spoilers but I do not recommend reading it unless you have seen the movie. In Jane Campion’s […]
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January 12, 2022
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce,1080 Bruxelles is a difficult film to watch. It’s painfully bereft of life. It is a slow, methodical, […]
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January 9, 2022
The Pathological Ravings of Masumura’s Blind Beast
I don’t know what I can say or what anyone can say about Yasuzô Masumura’s movie Blind Beast except that it is pathological. I don’t know […]
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December 26, 2021
Hilal Baydarov’s 2020 film In Between Dying is Wonderful
In Between Dying was written and directed by Hilal Baydarov in 2020. It was filmed primarily in Baydarov ’s home country of Azerbaijan which sits […]
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December 12, 2021
Masumura’s Dark And Bloody Irezumi
Despite its appearance Irezumi is not a chanbara (swordplay) film. It shares many of the trappings of the genre, but it is far more brutal than […]
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December 5, 2021
Favorite Scene №26: Aguirre The Wrath of God
In 1972 Werner Herzog dragged his pet mad man Klaus Kinski and a small group of actors to Peru to shoot Aguirre The Wrath of […]
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November 21, 2021
Favorite Scenes №1: Nosferatu
In 1922 Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau filmed the climactic end to his film Nosferatu. Our heroine, Ellen, sits cowering in her bed as the vampire enters her […]
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November 10, 2021
Baxter, A Dog and His Boy
There are so many different ways to engage Baxter, a film directed by Jérôme Boivin in 1989. Its a political film about our relationship to […]
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November 10, 2021
Entertainment And The Films Of Akira Kurosawa And Ingmar Bergman
There is a long held principle in film criticism that the entertainment value of a movie is in some way set in opposition to its […]
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November 9, 2021
Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Deer
In 2017 Yorgos Lanthimos released his remarkable film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Everything about its look and feel is unusual. The pacing, the compositions, […]
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November 8, 2021
The Role of the Environment in Onibaba and Woman In The Dunes.
Between the films Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo in 1964) and Woman In the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1964) there are only five characters and two locations. Both films are striped […]
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November 8, 2021
Self Awareness in Rear Window vs. The Tenant
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Roman Polanski’s The Tenant are both films about observing and being observed. Rear Window was released in 1954 and The Tenant was released two decades later in 1976. […]
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November 8, 2021
Deadpan as a Filming Technique in Roy Anderson’s Films
Deadpan is not ordinarily ascribed to a style of filmmaking. It is more often associated with the lack of emotion on an actor’s face during […]
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November 7, 2021
Mohammad Rasoulof's The White Meadows
In 2009 Director Mohammad Rasoulof was imprisoned for making The White Meadows. He was accused of “acting against national security and propaganda against the regime” and […]
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November 6, 2021
Niki Lindroth von Bahr's The Burden
How do you like your existentialism served? Perhaps as a song sung by a fish in a bathrobe sitting in a bleak, little hotel room? […]
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November 6, 2021
Alan Arkin's Little Murders
In 1971 with a budget just under $100,000 Alan Arkin and Jules Feiffer crafted an absurd masterwork of vicious intensity. Little Murders is less a narrative film […]
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November 5, 2021
Jean Luc-Godard and Charlie Parker, No Spoon Full of Sugar For You
George Bernard Shaw said of Richard Wagner “He’s better than he sounds.” This could be said about both Jean Luc-Godard and Charlie Parker. Both men […]
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November 4, 2021
The Subjective Depiction of The Subjective In Robert Altman’s Film Images
Robert Altman’s 1972 film Images enhances the idea of the subjective camera by compounding it. He creates an unstable space where not only the character’s perceptions are […]
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November 3, 2021
The Dark Trance of Horse Money
In writing about Pedro Costa’s film Horse Money there is no place to start. The film defies description or analysis. You have to just open yourself to […]
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November 3, 2021
The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open: Storytelling In Real Time
The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open blends form and function to create a compelling narrative whole. Its proof positive that the rules of filmmaking […]
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November 3, 2021
Galder Gaztelu-Urruti’s Platform
The Platform is a metaphor in the tradition of Animal Farm or Lord of The Flies. It very clearly focuses on capitalist ideology and has a secondary biblical theme […]
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