Before I met my wife, my longest relationship lasted a span of only three months. I wasn’t afraid of commitment; I was too committed too early. I fell fast and hard. Every time. But that doesn’t mean I never went through the typical relationship bumps in the road. I fought with plenty of exes about …
And here we are. The day after Easter and we’ve reached the top of the mountain. While compiling this list, it’s become evident that true religious films just aren’t made anymore (and if they are, they are widely panned). That being said, religious themes exist in more mainstream movies than ever, despite there being no …
On Halloween, the tradition is to indulge in films replete with monsters, zombies, and creatures that go bump in the night. But those types of films don’t always provide the psychological terror cineastes may be craving. International and alternative cinema has always been willing to tread where conventional genre cinema dares not be it in …
Back when Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos first clambered barefaced upon the international stage with his daring Dogtooth, quite a few hastened to mention its striking resemblance to Arturo Ripstein’s similarly self-contained The Castle of Purity, made some 35 years earlier. In the wake of his first English-language effort The Lobster, one might even go further and compare all that Lanthimos has done thus far to Ripstein’s film: the …
40. Night of the Hunter (1955) Scene: The Preacher on the Horizon Video: http://youtu.be/9PyNL2ahKwc?list=PLZbXA4lyCtqolaQOAXly96de5FYQlPzqK Just like a few others in this section of the list, Charles Laughton’s brilliant Night of the Hunter isn’t really a horror film, but still sets out to keep the audience on edge. Starring a diabolical Robert Mitchum as a preacher/serial killer …
If there is an essential problem that all art must confront, it is the vast and uncrossable gulf between individual human experience. All expression is flawed in that it can never express completely, because no point of view is perfectly able to be communicated between two beings. Something must always get lost in the shuffle. …
“Persona” is a supreme blend of ambiguity and stylistic flourish. It’s a film that rewards multiple viewings for the depth of character psychology and narrative discovery, and also for its astonishing beauty.
“You can’t understand until it happens to you.” Roya, played by Mahnaz Afshar, listens to this line left on her answering machine repeatedly. It is a part of her husband, Ali’s, confession to his infidelity with one of Roya’s piano students, with whom he’s run off. Ali sees himself as a victim of his passion, …
The first time we see Monica Vitti’s character Giuliana, the Italian woman whose mental struggle with her environment is chronicled in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), she is an olive-green figure walking along a black, desolate wasteland. This green, a symbol of nature and tranquility, contrasts with the orange flames pulsing from the factory and …
Riffing on Terek Puckett’s terrific list of director/actor collaborations, I wanted to look at some of those equally impressive leading ladies who served as muses for their directors. I strived to look for collaborations that may not have been as obviously canonical, but whose effects on cinema were no less compelling. Categorizing a film’s lead …
E. B. White once wrote, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” Analyzing trilogies seems to the same. The entire point is to enjoy them. Still, given the many sins to be found in film, there are worse things than movie trilogies but few have …
Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf) Written by Ingmar Bergman Directed by Ingmar Bergman Sweden, 1968 Throughout his storied career, Ingmar Bergman displayed a keen interest in the psychological. However, he didn’t often broach the psychological from a horror perspective. Herr Bergman occasionally brought supernatural elements into his films, but he always stopped just short of …
Scenes from a Marriage (299 minutes, 6 parts) Directed by Ingmar Bergman Written by Ingmar Bergman 1973, Sweden, SK It should be intuitive knowledge, that one’s ability to love is often captive to one’s ability to love themselves, to be happy with where they are, where they are going and where they might never end …
Cries and Whispers Directed by Ingmar Bergman Sweden, 1972 The inanity of Bergman’s canonisation has always baffled me: I have tended to endure his films as a bitter medicine – worthwhile but unenjoyable, classics that everybody wants to have watched but nobody wants to watch. Subjecting myself to Cries and Whispers on the merit of …