As with all lists, this is personal and nobody will agree with every choice – and if you do, that would be incredibly disturbing. It was almost impossible for me to rank them in order, but I tried and eventually gave up. Enjoy! **** 150: Session 9 Directed by Brad Anderson Written by Stephen Gevedon …
Mexico Barbaro Directed by Isaac Ezban, Laurette Flores Bornn, Jorge Michel Grau, Ulises Guzman, Edgar Nito, Lex Ortega, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Aaron Soto Mexico, 2014 There’s a line in Mexico Barbaro that goes something like, “Drain the blood from your sister’s vagina or I’ll suck your soul out of your anus.” And that’s not the …
“Day for Night,” a much loved, widely awarded, and truly joyous work about the trials and triumphs of making a film and the extraordinary power of motion pictures as objects of affection and obsession.
#10. Chinatown (1974) Lost to: The Godfather Part II Well, no one will argue that it should have won, but still. Roman Polanski’s film made a true leading man out of Jack Nicholson. It grabbed eleven nominations, only taking home one. That being said, that one was for Original Screenplay, written by Robert Towne, which may …
The Tenant Directed by Roman Polanski France, 1976 Featuring Roman Polanski’s last major appearance in one of his own films, The Tenant completes the director’s look at paranoid city life, begun with 1965’s Repulsion. Polanski plays Trelkovsky, a shy man who becomes convinced that his neighbors are scheming to drive him to suicide. Like Rosemary’s …
Featuring a closely-coiffed Mia Farrow as the soft-spoken, childlike Rosemary Woodhouse, potential mother to the devil; John Cassavetes, post-Shadows, and just about to truly kick off his great directorial run; and the inimitable Ruth Gordan as a sort of Grace Zabriskie-precursor: the creepy neighbor next door, heavily made-up and eerily meddlesome, Rosemary’s Baby picks up the paranoid thread of 1965’s Repulsion. The film also anticipates the similarly – though more political – claustrophobic suspicion of Alan Pakula’s 1970’s films.
What do film directors Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Agnès Varda, Robert Wise, Fred Zinnemann, Luis Buñuel, Alain Resnais, Roman Polanski, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Louis Malle, Richard Linklater, Tom Tykwer, Alexander Sokurov, Paul Greengrass, Song Il-Gon, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro Iñárritu have in common? More specifically, what type of film have they directed, setting them …
The first in Roman Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy” (preceding Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant), Repulsion is a landmark psychological horror film, whose influence can be seen from Fat Girl to Black Swan.
This is a somber, sorrowful, generally faithful, and visually satisfying version of one of Shakespeare’s most cinematic works
What is art if not an artist’s fiction translated into reality? A fiction wrought from fear, self-loathing and prejudice that escapes the confines of a sonnet and burrows its way into the collective consciousness. Now it is reality. Now it has power. Now it’s an idea, and ideas are poisonous. Rather than dispelling the poisonous reality, Polanski’s Venus in Fur toys with the delicate fiction lying beneath. It’s a study in role-playing, where the players and creators are equally baffled by the game. More importantly, this is the intensely personal work of an artist who understands that only by blurring the lines between fiction and reality can he approach what Herzog calls, “the ecstatic truth.”
My first real attempt at understanding the brilliance that was Stanley Kubrick came in my freshman year of college, when I wrote a research paper on 2001: A Space Odyssey for an English class. After all that work, I only received a B and found myself more confused than ever. But there it was – …
The imagery of “Tess” is what strikes first and leaves the greatest impression, and it was undoubtedly with this in mind that Criterion pulled out all the stops with this release.
With the eve when the veils between worlds is at its thinnest around the corner, it’s difficult not to think of the day’s most prominently featured figure: the witch. Below is an essential viewing list, ranging in genre and targeted age group, of filmic work that showcase witches (loosely defined for our purposes) and …
Sundance Selects has picked up the U.S. rights to Venus in Furs (La Vénus à la fourrure), a French drama directed by Roman Polanski and starring Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric. The film premiered in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and is an adaptation of a play by David Ives …
Film noir comes full circle in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974). Thirty years before its release, crime dramas saw the birth of a fundamental character – the noir hero. From Dashiell Hammett to Raymond Chandler, The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The Big Sleep (1946), the noir hero inhabits a world of hopelessness and dark tragedy. The Maltese Falcon saw Humphrey Bogart’s inaugural portrayal of this amoral anti-hero and began film noir as we know it.
Citadel Written and directed by Ciaran Foy Ireland/UK, 2012 Every time you walk down a dark alleyway, you’ve felt it. Every time you’ve waited for the bus late at night, you’ve felt it too. Every unsolicited knock on the door, tap on your shoulder, distant chorus of laughter, and sudden hush of silence, you’ve felt …
Citadel Written and directed by Ciaran Foy Ireland/UK, 2012 Every time you walk down a dark alleyway, you’ve felt it. Every time you’ve waited for the bus late at night, you’ve felt it too. Every unsolicited knock on the door, tap on your shoulder, distant chorus of laughter, and sudden hush of silence, you’ve felt …
Rosemary’s Baby Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Ira Levin and Roman Polanski USA, 1968 Without actress Mia Farrow, Roman Polanski’s 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby perhaps isn’t the classic that we know today. Inhabiting the crucial and now infamous lead role with such sheer force and authenticity, the slender actress would become a trailblazer for disturbed female characters …
The Fearless Vampire Killers Written by Gérard Brach and Roman Polanski Directed by Roman Polanski USA/UK, 1967 Roman Polanski’s comedy was his first foray into both Hollywood and colour filmmaking, and, whether intentional or not, feels like a deliberate parody of the Hammer studio’s brand of gothic horror. Polanski’s film has similarly striking castle locales, …
Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out Directed by Marina Zenovich USA, 2012 It is probably necessary that Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out exists. Once director Marina Zenovich established herself as the definitive documentarian of the famed director’s sexual assault case with 2008’s fine film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, an account of Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland …
Every thirty days, I like to post a list of my favorite films I’ve recently watched. Here are the best films I’ve seen throughout the month of September. This list is based on movies theatrically released here in Canada, and I do not include what I have seen at film festivals. **** #1: We Need …
Carnage Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza 2011, France/Germany/Spain Roman Polanski has made his first comedy since 1972’s What?, and it’s very funny. Comedy is the easiest and the hardest genre to review. The biggest question is how many laughs does the film contain, but you have to pinpoint why …
Carnage Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Roman Polansi 2011, France The inciting incident of Carnage involves two preadolescent boys having a disagreement in a public park. Their tiff escalates until one of them strikes the other in the face with a stick. The majority of the film then focuses on the parents of the …