film   //   cinema
 

/ recent screenings /

here are reviews of selected movies i've watched recently:

for reviews of other previously-watched movies that are well worth mentioning, click here.

for a list of all-time favorite movies, click here.
 

  • susanne bier -- after the wedding
  • don roos -- happy endings
  • alfred hitchcock -- to catch a thief
  • john ford -- the grapes of wrath
  • sergei parajanov -- sayat nova [the color of pomegranates]
  • cedric klapisch -- un air de famille
  • wes anderson -- the royal tenenbaums
  • agnes jaoui -- comme une image
  • powell & pressburger -- the life and death of colonel blimp
  • wes anderson -- rushmore
  • michael winterbottom -- tristram shandy: a cock and bull story
  • satyajit ray -- pather panchali

     

    • susanne bier -- after the wedding
      (c) 2006
      [stunning camera work and an excellent soundtrack (sigur ros) embed the viewer in this tale of two worlds, that of wealthy bourgeois jorgen (a terrific rolf lassgard) and that of counter-culture do-gooder (mads mikkelsen), worlds connected by the woman they love, hellene (sidse knudsen). the plot unravels like an easter egg hunt, full of twists and turns, but without ever feeling implausible or even forced. a tale of mixed feelings, mixed allegiances, of people whose long-buried history is brought back from the dead because someone is selflessly dying. actors' direction is excellent and so is the dogma-inspired but not over-the-top camera work. bier has since accepted a hollywood stint with the usual results -- a much heavier and duller things we lost in the fire, full of stars but with half the strength of this one.]
       
    • don roos -- happy endings
      (c) 2005
      [a typical weave-the-threads-as-you-go-along of the post-pulp fiction age, happy endings has an adequate title -- the movie starts pretty slow but keeps getting better as it approaches the end. the several stories talk about alienation in contemporary life -- duh -- and how this makes room for predatory behavior in an attempt to escape self-understanding. good performances, especially by lisa kudrow (of friends, which may have burned her image; she's a good actress). nothing to write home about, but with a number of good moments and a creative use of captions to talk about the character's future, inviting the viewer to watch the scene as a flash-back of sorts.]
       
    • alfred hitchcock -- to catch a thief
      (c) 1955
      [following up on rear window, to catch a thief is a prelude to hitchcock's late-50s masterworks vertigo and north by northwest. in fact, it bears more affinities with north by northwest than with any other movie by him. cary grant plays is usual blasé type. grace kelly plays herself and is very good at that. you can see why rainier fell in love, especially after this screen test of her with a riviera background. the plot is a bit flabby, and the movie is better for its glamour than for the mystery aspect, of which there is not much. although all hitchcock movies are more about sex than anything else, this is one of the more obviously so, especially in the relations between grant's character, kelly's, and her mother, played by an over-the-hilltop jessie royce landis. most enjoyable.]
       
    • john ford -- the grapes of wrath
      (c) 1940
      [an excellent adaptation of john steinbeck's parable of how hardship can be redeemed through social consciousness, ford's movie -- with henry fonda as tom joad -- captures well the spirit of the "okies," sharecroppers from oklahoma who were impoverished by years of dusty wind and eventually forced out of their land for the sake of mechanized agriculture and, steinback emphasizes, profit. they went west. their identities are hard to keep in their uprooted lives but eventually they stumble into a communist community where they are once again happy, but only for a while. chased by everyone, tom decides to go underground and become a defender of poor people's rights. the film leaves it open -- will he become a preacher? a labor organizer? a union man? a card-carrying "red"? we don't know. ford's use of landscape in long, wide shots of road and sky is masterful. fonda does the job well, without infusing too much depth, grandeur, and self-righteousness where steinbeck wanted none. jane darwell as ma joad won a well-deserved oscar. great stuff.]
       
    • sergei parajanov -- sayat nova [the color of pomegranates]
      (c) 1968
      [hard as nails. almost no plot. tarkovsky admitted this was the greatest inspiration for andrei rublev, and it's easy to see why, but parajanov does not achieve (does not aim at?) the same sort of character thickness tarkovsky gets out of even his most visual films. each shot is an exhibition-quality photographic image and we're warned at the outset that the movie will portray the life of an eighteenth-century armenian poet as he experienced it, not as others would see it. laudable goal, but hard to achieve. the whole thing is a visual metaphor, and my attention wandered on a regular basis. felt like the kind of thing one would like to have watched, but will not necessarily like to watch. dvd also has an interesting interview with parajanov, who is a great character himself.]
       
    • cedric klapisch -- un air de famille
      (c) 1996
      [the title captures it beautifully -- un air de famille is both a whiff of family life and an aria to family life. based on a theater play, almost the whole film is set in one countryside café, where the family of the owners gathers every friday evening. klapisch walks us through a special friday, in which lots of threads -- romantic love, family love, professional ambition, memories of past happiness and past humiliation, hope and hopelessness -- all are brought to bear on the events of the day and force the characters to rethink their relations to each other (and to themselves). light comedy with dark moments. a good ensemble cast with terrific performances by jean-pierre bacri, agnes jaoui, jean-pierre darroussin, and wladimir yordanoff.]
       
    • wes anderson -- the royal tenenbaums
      (c) 2001
      [the most unnecessary film by wes anderson, the royal tenenbaums is nevertheless a very plasant movie to watch. if it wasn't the perfection of anderson's two major movies (rushmore and the life aquatic), this would probably feel better than it does, but as it is, it feels a bit of an underachievement, especially during the first half. it has most of the ingredients that account in part for the success of the other anderson films -- script co-authored with owen wilson, a great team cast, top-notch art direction, set decoration, and soundtrack by regular collaborators -- but the whole thing takes a while to start spinning and then it still feels a bit clunky. worth more for specific scenes than for the whole film, in a way similar to most jim jarmusch's films. you can find better treatment of the same themes in other films by anderson, above all the life aquatic.]
       
    • agnes jaoui -- comme une image
      (c) 2004
      [sue halpern starts her review of kiran desai's second novel (the inheritance of loss) in the new york review with the sentence: "there are certain fictions upon which fair-minded, relatively affluent citizens of good will base their lives, the first being that we are indeed people of good will." such fictions are the main undercurrent in agnes jaoui's film. the other main theme is the pervasiveness and pernicious effects of the obsession current societies have with being slim. not as witty as her remarkable le gout des autres, comme une image has the same rhythm of urban displacement and a set of equally well-developed characters. jean-pierre bacri (who had already played the main role in gout), plays an irascible writer around whom the usual success-thirsty vampires of contemporary "cultural" circles gather. jaoui herself plays a woman torn by her failure to escape the whirlwind of "personal" relations based on interest -- but only occasionally torn; for the most part she enjoys the perks. the movie is directed with a deft hand, displaying the emotional fluctuations typical of french comedy. very enjoyable.]
       
    • powell & pressburger -- the life and death of colonel blimp
      (c) 1943
      [this one went straight to my best-of-all-times list. powell & pressburger decided to dissect the cartoon character colonel blimp, used in interwar britain to represent the out-of-touch upper classes who continued to daydream about an empire where the sun never set while europe was on the brink of a war that would destroy the last hopes of british grandeur. what kind of life would turn someone into a colonel blimp? they set out to answer that through a riveting fictional bioptic of blimp that takes us from the boer wars to world war ii. loads of great humor mix with existential angst to produce one of the great movies on life in general. roger livesey delivers the performance of a lifetime on the title role, anton walbrook plays the counterpoint role with flair, and deborah kerr plays three different roles with equal competence. powell & pressburger deliver the goods in their usual masterful manner.]
       
    • wes anderson -- rushmore
      (c) 1998
      [finally, someone made a movie about your teenage years. no, wait a minute, it's about my teenage years. no, wait, ah..., my memory is no longer what it used to be. unmistakably wes anderson's work, with vintage bill murray acting, this is clearly a prequel to anderson's magnum opus this far, the life aquatic with steve zissou. the themes are all the same -- father / son relations, coming of age, life in small circles, loving and not understanding. great stuff with a terrific soundtrack and great art direction and sets by andrew laws and sandy reynolds-wasco. ah, the nostalgia and the exhilaration.]
       
    • michael winterbottom -- tristram shandy: a cock and bull story
      (c) 2005
      [if you can make a movie of laurence sterne's the life and opinions of tristram shandy, probably the most unfilmable book of all times, you must be very good. winterbottom is. with excellent casting decisions -- steve coogan as tristram (and a few other roles); rob brydon as tristram's uncle -- and great editing, winterbottom creates a movie that mirrors the book more than retells it. scenes from the movie are intersected by scenes from the making of the movie, preventing the story from advancing, just like in the book, which ends before tristram is even born. kudos to winterbottom and hilarious performances by coogan & brydon. the book-end scenes (stay through the end credits) are as good as film comedy gets.]
       
    • satyajit ray -- pather panchali
      (c) 1955
      [the first of the apu trilogy, pather panchali is a moving story of an family in rural india. beautifully shot and with a soundtrack by ravi shankar, it explores several interesting themes of family life with a background of trenchant social criticism. apu is born to the poor branch of a village family, torn physically by poverty and spiritually by their place on the social ladder. his only dream is to go with her sister watch the train pass by on a nearby plain, but even that goal eludes him. ray is very good at showing not only how hardship creates bitterness and undercuts affection, but also how people can and do resist this corroding power of being a have-not -- hardship separates but even greater hardship unites. beautiful images of timeless rural india.]
       

     

    / previous reviews /

    and here's a list of other previously-watched movies that are well worth mentioning:

    • wes anderson -- the life aquatic with steve zissou
      (c) 2004
      [only wes anderson movie i've watched this far. very impressed. after forty five minutes i was truly enjoying the ride without yet knowing where it was leading me. movie is not about anything. of several interwoven threads, solitude is possibly most important. zissou (bill murray) is a lonely chap, getting old, feeling past his peak, abandoned by his dreams, his skills, his wife (anjelica houston), her money, and even by his greatest friend, who was killed by a mythical shark. as he embarks on a journey to exact revenge from the shark, he is joined by his possible son ned (owen wilson), and a journalist called jane (cate blanchett). we follow them in their pathetic voyage through, above all, terrific sets created by production designer mark friedberg and his team of art directors and set decorators. the movie is not only visually gorgeous, it is also an audio feast, with brazilian musician pele dos santos (playing seu jorge) singing david bowie's songs in portuguese. it all makes a happy story in which zissou finds his bearings again by the end. deliciously meaningless.]
       
    • werner herzog -- grizzly man
      (c) 2005
      [one of the most powerful movies i've seen in recent months, grizzly man is a documentary about a documentary. timothy treadwell was a naturalist and amateur movie-maker who spent several months a year in alaska befriending -- or, as he put it, protecting -- grizzly bears. his remarkable physical courage enabled him to live closer to the bears that i imagined possible, and he was eventually (together with his girlfriend) devoured by one of them. but this is for the most part a movie about timothy's soul. he escaped a life of emotional trouble when he "found" the bears. he loves them and wants to become one of them. and it is these images on the border of insanity that herzog presents lightly edited. timothy talks to the bears, plays with the foxes, tells the camera how much he loves these creatures and how important his work is, scolds the government for getting in his way, and sometimes elaborates on the meaning of it all, life, god, death, love, hate, etc. everything is very naked. everything feels raw -- and richard thompson's original soundtrack deserves a lot of credit for this. The footage of timothy in the wilderness is interspersed with interviews of bear experts, timmy's friends and family, even the coroner describing their death. one listens to people talking about how little sense timmy had; but it feels like they are the ones who lost the plot, with all their strong distinctions between human and non-human animals. herzog manages all the materials deftly, especially by turning the first half of the movie into a crescendo of tension that we expect will culminate in the scene of timmy's death, only to solve it by showing footage of himself listening to the audiotape of the incident on headphones, and subsequently leading the viewer to reshape his attitude and watch the second half in a much more relaxed, almost anticlimactic mood. he also presents an interesting nature-is-chaos-and-violence counterpoint to treadwell's view of nature-as-harmony. which makes for a truly great film.]
       
    • woody allen -- match point
      (c) 2005
      [best woody allen movie in a long, long time, at least since the late 80s, i'd say probably all the way since "interiors" (1978). shot in london, consolidating allen's reputation as a director of cities. the movie is self-consciously about luck and its role in human fate. from the introductory sequence, in which a voice over a slow motion of a tennis ball striking a net and hovering over it elaborates on how being lucky is better than being good, to one of the final scenes, in which the main character quotes sophocles -- "being unborn is perhaps the greatest boon of all" -- to the ghost of the his pregnant girlfriend, whom he just shot, chance is all over the screen. chris wilton (jonathan rhys meyers) is a poor, thoughtful, good-looking young tennis coach who is determined to do something with his life -- "to make a contribution". as a result of a few lucky moves, he becomes the son-in-law of a wealthy london financier. at the same time, he enters an affair with a hopeless and hopelessly seductive dead-ender (scarlett johansson / nola rice), and starts lying left and right, playing things by ear, and relying ever-more on luck to, as he put it, juggle half a dozen things at the same time. his wife (emily mortimer / chloe hewett) tries hard to get pregnant without success. nola, however, bears a child chris does not want. he realizes how he's becoming a monster of deception; ends up killing nola just when all his wife's fertility treatments finally work. the police almost find out he killed her but a coincidence points to someone else and he is cleared of the murder. lucky? who knows. allen shows us a man struggling to cope with the recognition he became a monster. but it is not clear he feels worse than those around him. in fact, it is not clear he is worse than the self-obsessed, spoilt people who bought him into their family. maybe he manages to get rid of guilt and enjoy the glamorous life he has acquired. or maybe not. lucky anyway.]
       
    • david barison and daniel ross -- the ister
      (c) 2004
      [interesting documentary on martin heidegger's commentary on holderlin's poem "the ister" -- the attic greek name for the danube. lots of interview footage and voice over by bernard stiegler, who other, less interesting (at least on film) philosophers. slow at times at running for a total of more than three hours, it manages to leave the viewer with an equally long-lasting impression of the intricate narratives surrounding the river, the connection between german and greek cultures, man and nature, history and myth, war and human nature, etc.]
       
    • hirokazu koreeda -- nobody knows
      (c) 2004
      [pungent tale of four kids who live confined to their apartment with their mother, who doesn't want anybody to know she has children. she eventually abandons them, leaving the kids to fend off for themselves. the movie captures well the ways in which kids do and perceive things differently from adults, but not much. excellent direction by one of the most interesting contemporary japanese directors.]
       
    • hirokazu koreeda -- maborosi
      (c) 1995
      [sad story of lower middle class contemporary japan -- a story of inability to understand death, or what was perhaps a suicide. how those wounds can continue open for years, tainting everything that comes after them. koreeda uses only still shots with beautiful framings, and the cinematography is equally stunning.]
       
    • manoel de oliveira -- the convent
      (c) 1995
      [i've seen this many times, as it is one of my favourites by portuguese film master oliveira. first-rate cast, with john malkovich, catherine deneuve, and luis miguel cintra -- one of the best portuguese actors -- in the main roles. whole movie is shot in convento da arrabida, a strange, half-ruined portuguese monastery by the sea, which oliveira's camera captures beautifully. plot is adaptation of goethe's faust, with a few twists. a tale about good and evil, pretty simple stuff, but an excellent treatment nevertheless. great soundtrack, by less-than-well-known contemporary composers.]
       
    • lewis milestone -- all quiet on the western front
      (c) 1930
      [excellent move on war, set in wwi. based on erich maria remarque eponymous novel, this was a big mgm production, and contains some of the best battle scenes ever. so much for the need to include fancy special effects in order to convey how war must be like. remarque apparently declined playing the main character, which ended up going to later-star lew ayres, who delivers a solid performance. the movie has a few memorable shots, like the one that starts with a street scene in germany in the summer of 1914 and pans to a classroom interior, where a teacher is delivering a militaristic / nationalistic lecture. louis wolheim plays the key role of the sergeant in charge of a company, and does a terrific job. the portrait of the empty life once the soldiers return back home is compelling, and the end of the movie is touching. the movie fits well the pacifist inter-war mood, with a poignant scene in which a german solder stabs a british one who had the bad luck of jumping into the same bomb crater in which he was hiding. as the British takes forever to die, the german questions the value of national differences and extols their common humanity -- much more nuanced than this sentence, sorry for mangling the emotional detail of the movie. one of the best war movies ever.]
       
    • michael haneke -- caché
      (c) 2005
      [thick psychological thriller ending with a lot of open questions -- all important. several overlapping themes include: private / public; lying; how the past catches up with you -- or not; cruelty and self-deception; politics and personal experience; the way modern life makes people numb to the consequences of their actions on others; and the usual haneke theme of the relation between art and life. viewers are often left wondering for minutes whether they're watching the movie or one of the many tapes played within it. juliette binoche and daniel auteuil characteristically deliver excellent performances, and so does the small supporting cast. Everything is hidden in this movie -- the camera, the character's formative experiences, even most of the action. when it ends, the questions you're left to answer could as easily relate to you instead of the characters. one of the best movies by haneke, at the same level as "the pianist".]
       
    • billy wilder -- sunset boulevard
      (c) 1950
      [one of the best american movies from the mid-20th century, sunset boulevard is a story of opportunism, self-deception, and self-obsession. gloria swanson, herself a diva from silent movies whose days of fame are long gone, plays norma desmond, a diva from silent movies whose days are long gone. william holden, an actor going through a lull in his career, plays joe gillis, a script-writer going through a lull in his career. erich von stroheim (is there any other actor who combines dramatic intensity and humor so flawlessly?), a director whose career has ended plays max von mayerlin, a director whose career has ended -- and is now a butler working for norma, his ex-wife. and cecil b. demille plays, well, cecil b. demille. even the extras for a card-game-party scene are buster keaton, h.b. warner, and anna q. nilsson, all stars from the silent era. strikingly, von stroheim directed swanson in the movie that undid her career -- "queen kelly" (1928). in "sunset blvd.", swanson and holden watch a scene from this movie in her private theater, with von stroheim operating the projector. gloria swanson is astonishing playing this self-obsessed, strong-but-broken diva. her entry line is superb. gillis tells her "i know you, you used to be in the pictures, you used to be big," to which she replies "i am big; it's the pictures that got small". holden plays his all-american-boy character well too. but erich von stroheim steals all the scenes with both, by making you laugh with hesitation in every single appearance. wilder's work is characteristically low-key except for a few scenes, like the opening one, with gillis dead body floating in the swimming pool seen from underwater, which was actually shot from above with an underwater mirror and the water at the right temperature in order to minimize distortion. the plot is on the face of it about the ruthless hollywood world, in which everyone is willing to sell their soul for a few bucks. it was disliked by many, including some of the big muck-a-mucks in the movie business. but at a less obvious level, the story treats the themes of self-deception and moral corruption well. every one is well intentioned, and every one wrecks everyone else's life. great stuff.]
       
    • robert bresson -- l'argent
      (c) 1983
      [i confess this was the first bresson i saw, and being his final film, it has a well-developed personal language, with which i'm still grappling. very personal style, sometimes reminiscent of oliveira or angelopoulos. bresson doesn't use professional actors. what you lose in depth of interpretation appears to be more than compensated by a lot of spontaneity, which makes the movie subtle and light, despite the plot. based on tolstoy's short story "faux billets" (false notes), the story covers the effects of someone passing out a false bank note. as a consequence, an honest man has his life ruined -- gets arrested, daughter dies, wife leaves him, ends up committing horrible blood crimes. a lot of thought on the sadness caused by evil, the disproportionate effect minor crimes can have, the difficulty in escaping evil once it gets into one, the distinction between money and blood crimes (which in the end appears to be dissolved), and other main questions related with evil. how a regular bloke can become a lightning rod for humanity's evil. would see it again soon.]
       
    • joel coen -- barton fink
      (c) 1991
      [a good, very characteristically coen-brothers movie; perhaps the defining coen-esque movie. john turturro at his best, playing the title role, a "serious" progressive writer who accepts a contract to write scripts for a hollywood film studio and gets assigned a b wrestling movie. writer's block settles in and makes his life miserable. but the movie is not about this. rather, it explores the relationship between fink and charlie, his neighbor at the hotel earle (which probably symbolizes hell), a common man played by an excellent john goodman, who turns out to be a serial killer of nazi inclinations. interplay between good and evil, impotent good intentions and destructive mindlessness. the script is tight and the whole thing flows well, though it lacks the intensity of blood simple or fargo, or the exhilaration of the big lebowski or o brother, where art thou? a few very well-shot scenes, like the first (and customary in the coens films) powerful-executive-office scene, the glamorous fight-in-the-dance-hall scene, and the hellish-hotel-corridor scene. still, it's strange that it won three awards at cannes, where the juries normally limit themselves to one per feature. good but not that good. just a very competent comedy with some symbolism to it.]
       
    • andré téchiné -- rendez-vous
      (c) 1985
      [an early téchiné, radically different from later, better-known and more well-rounded movies such as ma saison préférée or les roseaux sauvages. nina (juliette binoche, here at age 20) plays one of her most-powerful roles, that of a sexually-charged aspiring actress recently arrived in paris from the french countryside. she becomes involved with several men, developing different relations with each and exploring different aspects of love, sexuality, and intimacy through each of these. one of the men who gravitate around her (quentin / lambert wilson) is himself an actor who allowed his incarnation of shakespeare's romeo to destroy his career and his life. téchiné uses this device to explore the darkest sides of passion, with the movie mirroring several themes of romeo and juliet while deftly escaping the play-within-the-play genre. one of the themes the movie handles well is how events tend to place people in ever-narrower spots, ever stiffer emotional and psychological structures, and how hard it is to fight that trend and maintain individuality. still, it sometimes feels as if the characters are becoming caricatures of themselves -- which shows how difficult it is to deal with such complex themes within the limits of one-and-a-half-hour commercial cinema. contrasting with later téchinés, rendez-vous is a much more rough, tense, and aggressive movie, one that confronts, rather than seduces, the viewer. although téchiné won the best director prize at cannes for the film, its most impressive element is binoche's powerful acting, possibly her best ever (and at any rate on a par with her other great role, in kieslowski's trois couleurs: bleu), not his direction, which would still evolve significantly in subsequent years.]
       
    • leos carax -- mauvais sang
      (c) 1986
      [carax left a strong director's imprint in this movie. lots and lots of beautiful shots and riveting sequences. the plot involves a small-time crook (alex, played by the terrific circus-like denis lavant) who accepts to be hired by his deceased father's friends (marc / michel piccoli and hans / hans meyer) to conduct a robbery that will save them and enable him to start all over again and escape the tedium of the life he previously led. they plan to steal a batch of new virus that cause an aids-like disease, only it infect people who make love without feeling love for each other. though there would be a lot of scope here for a morality tale, carax seems uninterested in developing this line. one of alex's friends is infected during a relationship with alex's previous girlfriend (who still loves him, nor her new boyfriend), but this remains an undeveloped side sub-plot, so the whole theme is possibly a red herring. during the preparations for the job, he falls in love with marc's lover, anna (juliette binoche). but the movie is not about crime -- i'd say it's not about anything -- and there is little here that reminds us of a thriller. rather, carax develops a dream-space in which the characters float, and provide the material for his visual fireworks. excellent cinematography by jean-yves escoffier, using a very pale, mondrian-like palette -- tati's influence? a short but memorable sequence quoting gene kelly's "dancing in the rain," with alex running the on the sidewalk to the sound of david bowie's "modern love" -- "there's no sign of life / it's just the power to charm / i'm lying in the rain / but i never wave bye-bye." la binoche is a little less impressive here than in téchiné's rendez-vous, but still manages to display her superior acting abilities within the strait-jacket of carax's (her husband at the time) shooting requirements. overall, there seems to be little food for thought behind the glamorous images. maybe, just maybe, a bit of parody of several genres, including film noir, thriller, and 1940s musical.]
       
    • michael powell and emeric pressburger -- black narcissus
      (c) 1947
      [adapted from a novel by rumer godden, black narcissus lives up to its reputation as one of the most beautifully-shot movies in technicolor. powell and pressburger tell us the story of a few nuns who are selected by their order to set up a convent with a school and a dispensary in the himalayas. sister clodagh (deborah kerr) tries her best to overcome local suspicion, the advances of the self-consciously tempting mr. dean (david farrar), and a naïve young general who wants to be schooled in all things -- including physics with, as he put it, "the physical sister." she has to face both the collapse in morale of the other nuns, especially that of the lustful sister ruth (kathleen byron), who borders insanity, and the erosion of her own vocation, which leads her to indulge in daydreams about her past. isolation, in more than one way, affects them all deeply. everything is shot against the background of the imposing mountains (mostly matte backdrops in a london studio, just a few shots on location) and with the noise of blistering wind featuring prominently during the indoors scenes. this plot is used to speak of the varieties of good and evil -- we have the nun who is always merry, the one who overworks herself in search of redemption from isolation, the one who seeks to impose order upon chaos, the general, who looks for knowledge, and a native holy man, who has been sitting in the same place staring at the empty space and caring about nothing for years; but we also have the nun who gives in to temptation, the womanizing british outcast, the racist, harassing governess, and the tantalizing native girl (jean simmons). ambiguously in the background are the natives -- this was the year of india's independence. no stark good and evil contrasts here, though. rather, powell and pressburger illuminate the ambivalence of each character among two equally attracting poles, and the many ways emotions can mix-up with moral values to produce interesting human results. they also do a great job in creating one of the most erotic movies of its time -- how did the scene in which the young general refrains from whipping the native girl ever made it past the production-code censors of the time beats me& the sets are gorgeous, as is the cinematography. powell and pressburger's command of light is remarkable -- notice them playing with shadows, especially in the first few scenes, and the impressive overhead shots of convent life. get the new uk dvd release if you can, as the restoration is much better than the criterion one.]
       
    • david cronenberg -- a history of violence
      (c) 2005
      [can't see why this was elected best movie of '05 by, e.g., film comment's panel of critics. it's a good movie, but still. there are several good things about the film. first, cronenberg's multi-layered treatment of "violence" -- violence within the characters, between them, and between them and us, the audience. he has new things to say on each of these levels and the way he interweaves, compares, and contrasts alpha-male violence with sexual violence is superb. on every level he puts violence where it should be -- a core feature of (human) nature, intimately related with others, especially love. people love the ones with whom they are violence; or, conversely, they are violent with the ones they love. the second good thing in the movie is the acting, with viggo mortensen (tom stall / joey cusack) and maria bello (edie stall) doing top-notch jobs. william hurt (richie cusack) also deserves mentioning, if only for not playing himself for the first time in many years. the third good thing is the "darwinian" dimension of violence, about which cronenberg has been speaking in his interviews -- why on earth would you speak about your movies if you think you're worth your salt beats me -- and which is the central subplot in the film. joey has always been good at killing. his brother richie envies / despises him for it. his wife edie loves / hates him for it. his arch-enemy carl fogerty (ed harris) lives to defeat it. his son jack (ashton holmes) inherited it. the fit survive; you get the point. well, the movie treats this subject very delicately, so keep an eye out for it on a second viewing. a fourth and last point is cronenberg's treatment of the duality of character. as his brother richie points out to him in a memorable line, "you have been this other guy for almost as long as you have been yourself." who is tom stall / joey cusack, who has reincarnated in this perfectly jimmy-stewart-in-a-frank-capra-movie type? a consummate killer or, as he puts it, "just folks"? both? i'm not going to answer. now for what i didn't like that much. the idea of the pervasiveness of violence is by now a well-developed one, both in and beyond movies, and the only thing cronenberg seems to add to it is the sexual level -- the movie has two very powerful sex scenes rarely seen in mainstream stuff, which are for me the crux of the whole thing. both are violent; in different ways. both are pivotal in the plot. both are difficult to watch, in part because of the excellent acting. one of them start as a (marital) rape and becomes something more subtle as it unfolds -- a bit like the rape scene in peckinpah's straw dogs. but beyond this violence / sexuality connection, which is only recently being developed in wide-audience stuff (at least in the u.s.; bergman's tv series scenes from a marriage (1973), for instance, had pretty powerful stuff on this topic), cronenberg has little to offer that is new. a good movie, but nothing very special.]
       
    • jim jarmush -- broken flowers
      (c) 2005
      [jarmush is a director best remembered for his great 'moments,' in which he captures the subtleties of human interaction. his 'moments' always revolve around two characters, and consist in a bare-bones dialogue, shot at close range but without close-ups. there were plenty of these in night on earth, there's a great one between william blake (johnny depp) and nobody (gary farmer) in dead man, and the meeting between alfred molina and steve coogan (playing themselves) in coffee and cigarettes. the greatest moment in broken flowers is the final scene, another rich dialogue between don johnston (bill murray) and an anonymous young man (mark webber). it closes the movie but opens up a number of possibilities that are kept in the background till then. the plot is straightforward: don is "an over-the-hill don juan" (as his latest girlfriend tells him when she leaves) who finds meaning nowhere. when he receives an anonymous letter from an old lover stating he has a son, he lets himself be convinced by his neighbor winston (jeffrey wright) to take a trip into the past and visit some of his old lovers in an attempt to find out who wrote to him. he goes traveling around as well as within, and we follow him from stop to stop, watching him wonder how they all ended up living mutilated lives -- in one of the sketches sharon stone plays a "professional closet organizer" whose teenage daughter lolita competes for don's attention; in another one jessica lange plays an "animal communicator;" you get the point. don is never sure of having met his son, although in a few occasions his path crosses that of young men who could well be it. interestingly, it is only in these occasions -- gazing at total strangers at the airport or on the street -- that he seems to feel anything. in the end he returns home and drops this quest for meaning, in which he appears never to have been really interested. as he says in the closing dialogue, "the past is gone, the future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be, so, all there is, is this, the present; that's it." the cliché summarizes the character. but does it summarize the film?]
       
    • arnaud desplechin -- rois et reine
      (c) 2004
      [first film by desplechin i have ever seen. very good. the movie explores two spaces that are usually closed in modern commonsensical discourse -- the gap between truth and lie and that between normalcy and madness. best of all, it ties the two together. it starts with a tight story in which people are who they claim to be and relations are how they believe them to be. nora (a remarkable performance by emmanuele devos) lives a contented bourgeois life. ismael (an equally good mathieu amalric) is interned in a psychiatric hospital. everything looks adequate, and the characters' descriptions of their pasts fit what we know about them. gradually, however, we become aware of how fragile is each of their self-narratives. it's not that thy lie; just that they portray things in a certain way, which is not necessarily the way others do, nor the way we do as we watch the movie. so we're invited into this increasingly foggy moral / psychological space in which people desperately try to make sense of their lives, while events insist in opening cracks on their stories. as one of them puts it, "the past is not what is gone; it is what belongs to us." truth moves only in the shadows of the plot, and of each character's life. by the end, it is not only that the truthfulness / falsity and normalcy / madness relations have been problematized -- the connections between truthfulness / normalcy and falsity / madness have been equally called into question. in the one but last scene, ismael tells nora's son that, "of course we are right but on top of that we may also be a little wrong (un peut tort), and that's great, because it opens up all sorts of possibilities." indeed it does. great cinematography by eric gautier (pola x, diarios de motocicleta) and an excellent soundtrack including "moonriver" and the style council's "changing of the guard."]
       
    • liv ullmann -- sofie
      (c) 1992
      [this is liv ullmann's first full-length feature (150 minutes), heavily influenced by bergman's directing style. set in denmark in the late eighteen-hundreds, the plot accompanies sofie's (karen-lise mynster) life from her late twenties, when she lived with her parents senny (erland josephson) and frederikke (ghita norby) through her marriage, to the time everyone around her already died and her only son left to live his own life. as she says in the opening voice-over, "people's lives sail for a while with or against the current, until the current closes in on their lives." the themes are all bergmanian: intimacy, the "little life", affection versus lust, memory, and religiousness. among these, ullmann explores best the strong feelings generated by proximity. they can be good, like the love that develops between sofie and her husband jonas (torben zeller), whom she "learns" to love; and they can be bad, like the hatred her parents' marital happiness seems to cause her at times. religion means judaism in this movie, and ulmann explores the late-nineteenth century tensions between assimilation and tradition. the movie lacks a bit of rhythm, especially in the middle sections, where ullmann shows us more than she needs efficiently to convey the points, but overall it is a very pleasant experience, with both the first and last thirds providing ample opportunities for enjoyment. one can trace ullmann's directing style trying to emerge from under the imposing shadow cast by her connections with bergman -- with whom she did a number of great films as an actress, and with whom she had a relationship in the mid-1960s. sometimes the movie "feels" like his magnum opus fanny and alexander, but most of the time she is her own person. good stuff.]
       
    • akira kurosawa -- rashomon
      (c) 1950
      [writing a review of this one is a bit problematic. so many people have written about it that for a long time it felt as if i had already seen it although i had not -- and that is the problem: it is very different to watch this film already "knowing what it is about" (bracket the question of whether the sentence makes any sense) or to watch it as it was probably intended to be watched, that is, not having read a tonne of stuff on it. the movie presents the viewer with several narratives for the same event -- a rape followed by a murder, with different victims. each of the three witnesses, plus the murder victim himself speaking through a psychic, tells a different story. they don't seem to be lying, though. each incriminates him or herself. and each portrays his or her own position as the most honourable. each is tortured by the memory of the event. they're human, and they probably tell themselves the story they tell us. in fact, although each version is, strictly speaking, different, they all revolve around each of the characters' feelings and the details of their actions towards each other during the event, so there is some scope for, turning nietzsche on his head, "making the thus i willed it into a so it was". the movie opens with one of the witnesses puzzling over the other testimonials he just heard -- "i don't understand. i just don't understand". that sets the mood for the viewer. as he starts to recount what he just heard to a tramp who arrived, the latter is disassembling pieces of wood from the ruined building they're in and burning them to keep himself warm. seems like a metaphor for what the movie does to our notions of truth and our trust in human beings. the characters themselves lose their faith in humanity as they unveil the self-deceit that characterizes even well-intentioned people. near the end there's redemption through good deeds, which seem for kurosawa (who co-authored the script) to overturn bad thoughts, even possibly lies. still, no one in the movie can understand his / her own soul. as the tramp concludes, "in the end, you cannot understand the things men do". excellent cinematography by kazuo miyagawa -- of mizoguchi's ugetsu monogatari. the film is an intricate embroidery of light and shadow. it is all set in a forest through which light barely seeps, so that characters rarely are seen in full light or complete shade -- only when they're narrating their story later on in court. the soundtrack is excellent too, with a lot of humour. one of the long flashbacks is accompanied by what sounds like a japanese version of ravel's bolero. superior performances by toshiro mifune (tajomaro) and machiko kyo (masako). to go back to where i started, the problem with knowing the movie before seeing it is that this is a piece as much or even more about process than about product. kurosawa is interested in the process of disassembling certainties about the truth; in placing the viewer in a position in which s/he needs to react to the contradictions. the result -- what you get away with at the end -- is of lesser importance. as kafka wrote, "the right perception of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other."]
       
    • ang lee -- brokeback mountain
      (c) 2005
      [very interesting at two levels. first, the movie. second, the message with which producers and critics are spinning it. to the movie, then: brokeback mountain is a piece about gay love and gay psychology. its central theme is the psychological destruction gay love can cause on those who feel the need to remain "in the closet". plot is straightforward: ennis del mar and jack twist (heath ledger and jake gyllenhaal, both in superior performances) are two ranch hands in wyoming in the early sixties. they fall in love with each other during an idyllic summer spent looking after cattle in brokeback mountain. none of them, ennis in particular, can deal with the situation, so they part and move on to live what they hope will be 'normal' lives. each marries a well-intentioned girl and tries to turn himself into a wholesome family man. they meet after a number of years, their bond is immediately reconnected, and they subsequently spend time together on a regular basis, officially as old friends. although by now little else in their lives has any meaning, ennis declines jack's proposal to setup a "little cow and calf operation" and settle down together. they part for good, and ennis finds out later that jack was killed in a gay-bashing incident. that's it for structure. visually, lee contrasts the open emotional vistas of their moments together with the closure of their married lives by showing us ennis and jack's moments together always in beautiful outdoor, gorgeous-sky scenes' beautiful cinematography by rodrigo prieto, of amores perros, frida, and 21 grams -- and their family lives in cramped indoor scenes, a few of which literally revolve around closets. the "closet" is one of lee's main concerns: how it can destroy gays by turning them into self- and other-loathing people, ultimately destructive and self-destroying. now, to the marketing message with which the producers and critics (and by this i mean mainstream critics, who are an arm of the promotion industry) are spinning the movie. there is little that is gay in the movie's promotional materials. the words "gay" or "homosexual" are never written or spoken. nothing. same with critics, who keep lauding the movie as almost a family-viewing thing. the story is portrayed as "a universal love story". this is wrong, but interesting. it is wrong because the whole moral structure of the movie depends on this being a case of forbidden, specifically gay love. let's be clear: how could a movie that presents itself as mainstream portray in similar (very positive, endearing, universal-love-story) light two people who repeatedly cheat on their spouses to meet with each other if they were heterosexual? wouldn't heterosexuality -- that is, the possibility these people had, with low social costs, to divorce and resettle with the one they really love -- necessarily present adultery in a different light? how could middle-of-the-road audiences find endearing that two people half-consciously destroy their devoted spouses' lives in order to continue their lustful escapades? it is the "closet" that makes brokeback mountain's adultery story morally acceptable or even possible. it is interesting because by omitting the gay element from the movie's spin, lee (and all the associated machinery) is confronting audiences who would never go watch an overtly gay movie with the results of their social conventions, which are morally unacceptable on the terms they themselves set. to be clear: the social conventions of such audiences setup an environment in which gay people are less prone to "come out of the closet" and therefore more inclined to live lives similar to ennis' and jack's. by being presented in this light, the movie puts the blame for the moral and psychological havoc displayed onscreen squarely on the audience it tries to attract with its "universal love" rhetoric. which is only fair.]
       
    • andrei tarkovsky -- the steamroller and the violin
      (c) 1952
      [an early tarkovsky, in fact his thesis at the film school he attended, the steamroller and the violin is brimming with energy. a 45-minute feature on the relationship between a kid who's learning violin and a man who drives a steamroller. art and industry; playfulness and power. the story is set in fast-industrializing 1950s u.s.s.r. and tarkovsky uses mirrors, often reflecting the blinding sunlight, to talk about the illusions of soviet society. sasha, the little kid, is curious and lighthearted. sergei, the worker, is determined but also lighthearted; together they explore urban life. not much of a plot, but still a refreshing movie.]
       
    • gus van sant -- elephant
      (c) 2003
      [a tale of dysfunctional american suburbs, probably inspired by the columbine highschool events. two disgruntled teenagers decide to kill everyone at school. van sant guides us through the meaningless lives of killers, victims, and their families, weaving the narrative in post-pulp fiction style, with all the threads coming together in the final shootout sequence, beautifully shot (no pun intended) in the bare-concrete school building, with an eerie silence and a subtle slow-motion camera reinforcing the sense of insulation while leading the viewer to question the aesthetical qualities of the violent images. good stuff, if a bit too mainstream u.s. indie school.]
       
    • ingmar bergman -- saraband
      (c) 2003
      [bergman's final movie; at least for the time being. he has announced more than once that he would do no more cinema, but somehow his inspiration always drags him back -- thankfully for us. this time he opted for digital video (a first), with immaculate results. his first film without cinematographer sven nykvist in more than forty years (except, of course for his tv works), saraband features a control over lighting as good as any of bergman's previous works. the story is a sequel to scenes from a marriage, his 1973 tv series on the disintegration of a couple (see below under all-time favourites), and the main actors are the same -- liv ullmann (marianne) and erland josephson (johan). they meet after three decades apart to riminisce on their past life together and on how their separation allowed each of them to grow beyond the limits of what their marriage permited. at the same time, bergman touches another of his favourite themes -- the tension between the pursuit of artistical excellence and the requirements of social and, especially, family life. johan (josephson) has a middle-age son from another marriage living nearvy with his own daughter, a beautiful young woman who plays the cello. this father-and-daughter relation is centered on the piece of music they continually rehearse (the impossibly difficult saraband from bach's cello suite no. 5 bwv 1011) and it is so shot through with erotic tension that a major clash is hardly evitable. (this is an interesting variation on the theme of autumn sonata, in which mother and daughter meet for a few days around chopin's prelude no. 2 in A minor and try to work through their mutual past shortcomings.) this tightly wound family circle, which exists only for the short duration of marianne's stays, explores love, memory, regret, faith, faithlessness (in more than one way), art, and the strength and fragility of solitude, then breaks apart again, this time forever. throughout the picture, as bergman says in his autobiography, "bach's piety heals the torment of our faithlessness." not to miss. dvd release in january 06.]
       
    • jim jarmusch -- coffee and cigarettes
      (c) 2003
      [a set of vignettes under the unifying theme of coffee and cigarettes. most are unremarkable; two stuck to my mind. the one titled "cousins?" featuring alfred molina and steve coogan (playing themselves) is one of the best shorts i've ever seen. simple setting; one scene only. alfred contacted steve during the latter's promotional trip to l.a. and tells him that after some research he's discovered they're cousins. steve is for the most part uninterested on the possibilities opened by the revelation but slowly realizes how cruel he's being while at the same time alfred realizes there's little steven can do to regain his trust after having caused a horrible first impression, so the scene flips 180º, with steve trying to make it up to alfred and the latter being dismissive. then they part. very simple stuff, but a powerful script and beautiful acting. the second good sequence is the final "champagne" one, in which two old actors discuss life in general in a touching way. unequal but still worth seeing for these two great moments.]
       
    • john huston -- the misfits
      (c) 1961
      [this was both marilyn monroe's and clark gable's last movie. script by arthur miller, who continued to work on it on set, adapting it to reflect the ongoing destruction of his marriage with marilyn. gable did all the scenes himself, no stunts; including the ones in which he's dragged by a horse. he died of a heart attack shortly after completing the film. the two plus montgomery clift play a group of misfits, she an eastern divorcee now in the middle of nowhere, they making a living by rounding up and selling the few remaining wild mustang horses to dog food producers. the sequence in which they chase the horses through the desert landscape is one of the best ever. anywhere. the parallels between their situation and that of the remaining horses -- both chased to extinction by forces they can't control -- are evident but huston does not go for the obvious comparison, rather he has the viewer work her way through the situation and find her own answers to the questions posed, which are plenty and good.]
       
    • kenji mizoguchi -- ugetsu monogatari
      (c) 1953
      [finally criterion released the dvd for mizoguchi's masterpiece. it blends dream (or myth) and reality in a seamless way, opening up all sorts of interpretations. the movie develops one of the main themes of post-wwii japanese cinema: the disruptive effects of ambition and a violent quest for honour on human relationships and, above all, the human soul itself. two sixteenth-century japanese peasants get all they wish for in terms of material and military achievement but realize only too late that their lives became meaningless because their loved ones, whom they abandoned in the process, are no longer there to witness them -- at least this is one of many possible readings. dreams show both the possibilities for moral corruption and the chances for atonement, creating their own truth, and making reality unbearable and uncomprehensible without them.]
       
    • luchino visconti -- il gattopardo
      (c) 1963
      [always a pleasure to see this one again, especially on a large screen. the movie is a visual spectacle. set on the gap between two worlds -- the stable, soothing one which don fabrizio always inhabited and has no intention of abandoning, and the ravaging, vulgar one that seems to be engulfing everything and everyone around him. excellent acting and superb production design / set decoration make the whole thing a stunning experience. the (long) final ball scene deserves its reputation as one of cinema's top achievements.]
       
    • maryam shahriar -- daughters of the sun
      (c) 2000
      [a tale of destitution and female subservience in countryside iran. a teenage girl (amanagol) is forced to disguise herself as a man in order to find work and be able to help support her family. she has her head shaved (by her father), takes up rugmaking, and is kept locked by her employer. the conditions are appaling and the movie is shot with a gravity and slowness that make it impossible for the viewer to avoid confronting them. everything is grim. they are punished -- physically punished -- for things like staining a rug after cutting themselves accidentally. one of the most disturbing aspects of the movie is that as time goes by one ceases viewing amanagol as a woman; she becomes a being devoid of sexuality, like jewish prisoners in holocaust documentaries. with time, one of amanagol's female coworkers is attracted to her kindness and tries to develop a romantic relationship with her / him. we don't know if the other girl is attracted to amanagol because or in spite of her femininity. pungent.]
       
    • michel gondry -- eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
      (c) 2004
      [a romantic comedy starring jim carrey and kate winslet, but above all a great, great editing work by valdis oskarsdottir, under close supervision (one assumes) of director michel gondry, who cut his teeth directing videoclips for the likes of bjork and massive attack. i have to say i haven't seen such an impressive editing work since oliver stone's jfk. usually these fireworks (a.k.a. maze cinema) get in the way, but not here, because they're an intrinsic part of the movie and make its narrative structure possible -- thanks to another terribly smart script by charlie kaufman (of being john malkovich and the not-so-good adaptation). what would otherwise be a boring exercise in mass-marketed cinema becomes a interesting experiment, definitely worth checking out.]
       
    • vittorio de sica -- il giardino dei finzi-contini
      (c) 1970
      [this may end up in my list of all-time favourites. have to see it a few more times. two jewish families in fascist italy cope with the radicalization of the regime that resulted from its alignment with nazi germany. the capolicchios have decided to go along and immerse themselves in the system as much as possible, while the finzi-continis have followed a path of self-imposed seclusion. such is the social setting. but the story is about the much more nuanced relationships among the members of the finzi-contini circle: the beautiful and enigmatic micol, who finds reciprocal love (of what kind is unclear) in her brother alberto, and the numerous friends who have the privilege of joining them in their walled garden to play tennis. this inside / outside distinction, between the life of subtle emotional attachments and uncertain moral bearings that is possible inside the dream-like space of the garden, and the harsh realities of discrimination the rest of them must face on the outside, frames the whole narrative, which is centered on the unhappy love of one of the guests for micol, who in her own tortuous way prefers to steer clear of it. i somehow feel i haven't gotten all of it. superb film.]
       
    • vittorio de sica -- umberto d.
      (c) 1952
      [on the footsteps of sciuscià and ladri di biciclette, umberto d.'s is the third of de Sica's great works shaping the italian neorealist tradition. it is a story of poverty, solitude, dejection -- all quintessentially de sica's themes. the plot revolves around a retired public servant as he tries to cope with the hardships of existence in a society in which all human interaction seems to have been commoditized, throwing acid on the moral codes he upholds. threatened with eviction by his landlady -- a woman whom he helped during the war and who used to call him grandpa -- umberto tries to find a honourable way out. the central character, though, is flike, his dog, and the only being with whom he has a relationship of mutual respect and understanding. as umberto contemplates the possibility of abandoning him and committing suicide, flike's devotion and cheerfulness keep him going. thus de sica uses flike as a vehicle for the notion that humanity has left mankind and must now be sought somewhere else. the rhythm is a bit slack when compared with ladri but overall an excellent movie.]
       
    • zana briski and ross kauffman -- born into brothels
      (c) 2004
      [a great documentary about the children of prostitutes in calcutta's red-light district. the director worked with them for years trying to develop their skills through the practice of photograghy. she eventually got them international acclaim and the opportunity to enroll a boarding school in india. some take it; some don't. the film develops all of them as individual characters, taking the viewer beyond the usual reactions of pity and empathy.]

     

    / all-time favourites /

    and here's a list of those movies that keep playing in my head whenever the lights go out:

    • alain resnais -- hiroshima mon amour
      (c) 1959
      [resnais' first great movie about memory -- the second being marienbad. here, a french actress has a short affair with a local architect. they unexpectedly fall in love and go through memories of past pain and joy in their youth. this brings up resnais' central theme of the relation between loss and memory: one needs to lose in order to remember; happiness is often find in memories, not experiences; after all, there is no difference between the memory of what was and that of what could have been. the rather banal tragic plot is then superimposed on the tragedy of hiroshima. the two themes are interweaved without ever being actually compared -- how could they!? opening minutes with close-ups of amorous scenes are some of the most poetic i can remember. black-and-white cinematography by sacha vierny, who also worked with bunuel and greenaway. screenplay by marguerite duras. oh, and, by the way, eiji okada, the japanese actor who plays the main male role, didn't speak a word of french, so he just memorized the sound of all his lines. how's that for hard work?]
       
    • alain resnais -- l'année dernière à marienbad
      (c) 1961
      [one of the greatest and more difficult movies ever. forget about plot or narrative structure. the images are austere (vierny's cinematography) but the mood is voluptuous. the set if full of endless hallways, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and maze-like gardens. the characters are named "a" (the beautiful delphine seyrig), "x" (her possible past lover), and "m" (possibly her current lover or husband). resnais immerses the viewer in a labirynth of memories true or false as the characters revisit a hotel in marienbad where they think, but are not sure, they had had an affair the previous year. we cannot tell who's trying to convince whom of what. i suppose we shouldn't care. the movie, as resnais told journalists repeatedly, has no meaning. its openness is perhaps meant to mirror that of life and overcome the self-closed character of art works. the soundtrack is close to a contemporary organ requiem. did i say deep?]
       
    • alfred hitchcock -- north by northwest
      (c) 1959
      [a list of all-times favourites must include a hitchcock, who always managed to make the best movies ever about sex without ever touching the subject. this one features eva marie saint, james mason, and a cary grant that has never been greater -- watching this movie one cannot help recall his famous quip, "everybody wants to be cary grant: even i want to be cary grant." hitch weaves a narrative of secrecy and desire and provides the viewer an exhilarating experience, akin to riding a rollercoaster. the scene in which grant and saint meet at the train restaurant is one of the best flirting sequences that i know of. great fun.]
       
    • andrei tarkovsky -- andrei rublev
      (c) 1969
      [tarkovksy paints a series of eight moving portraits of rublev, the great medieval russian icon painter, through which we get to know the character always in an oblique manner. by refraining from structuring the narrative in classical biopic fashion, tarkovsky invites the viewer to go through the same experiences -- the doubts, questions, angst -- rublev went through in his artistic quest. despite horrendous animal cruelty in a couple of scenes, the movie deserves all the praise it got for the novel way in which it approaches the audience. nothing in it is ready-made, and we have to work our way to the character, who is never the central piece of the narratives. in fact, rublev features in the short stories almost as an extra and the burden of excavating the meaning of each vignette falls upon the viewer. requires a lot of work but is a uniquely rewarding movie. the only version worth seeing is the 205-minute director's cut, available as a criterion dvd.]
       
    • carl theodor dreyer -- la passion de jeanne d'arc
      (c) 1928
      [fabulous silent movie that provides us with some of the best shots ever of that most interesting of emotional landscapes -- the human face. maria falconetti plays jeanne with limitless humanity, and dreyer captures it all in the numerous close-up shots of her face. the actress pours herself into this terribly difficult role and dreyer is there to catch her when she falls. the imagery is so powerful the movie conveys as much or more emotional intensity as any talkie. as profound an experience as you'll ever be likely to have watching film. best ever?]
       
    • david lynch -- mulholland dr.
      (c) 2001
      [lynch has always coined enigmatic pieces, but his later movies -- among which lost highway and mulholland dr. deserve emphasis -- are on the edge of exploding the idea of cinematic narrative. diana (naomi watts) falls in love with camilla (laura harring) and, disillusioned with the latter's inability to commit to her decides to have her killed. then she repents and goes through a long fantasy in which she lives the life of her dreams. a blue key serves as the reference point at which reality and dreamspace connect. powerful performances, above all that of naomi watts, whose audition scene is as hot as it gets; great production design; excellent soundtrack. uncompromising and hypnotic. best of the decade this far.]
       
    • federico fellini -- la strada
      (c) 1954
      [the central statement of italian neorealism along with a couple of de sica's (see below), la strada is a pungent tale of love, devotion, and violence. my favourite fellini. a brutal anthony quinn plays a circus' hercules named zampano while tiny giulietta masina is the heartbreakingly fragile gelsomina, an unowned girl whom he intends to "train like a dog." this unique couple travels through disrupted post-wwii italy trying to make living. his cruelty is at odds with her chaplinesque naivete; he is unable to realize he loves her and in the end she becomes insane as a consequence of his gruesome acts. great nino rota soundtrack.]
       
    • ingmar bergman -- fanny and alexander
      (c) 1982
      [bergman's final masterpiece. deeply autobiographical, it addresses all the central themes of his work and, one could say, of life in general -- love, death, art, faith, intimacy, magic, insanity, the tension between great ambition and the pleasures of, as gustav adolf ekdahl puts it, "the little life." all quintessential bergman. the story of the ekdahl family seen through the eyes of two children, who experience the loss of their father and the horrible remarriage of their mother with the local bishop, a tortous and torturing soul. an enigmatic uncle (erland josephson) rescues them and brings them back to the magical intricacies of human life. no other movie i know portraits the happiness of domestic life as well as this. includes a memorable last appearance by gunnar bjornstrand, who had been with bergman since the fifties, playing an actor in a shakespearean role. the second movement of schumann's piano quintet op. 44 features prominently in the soundtrack, reinforcing the quasi-mystical environment in which the story unfolds. sven nykvist does his usual great job with cinematography. go for the five-hour director's cut, not the three-hour theatrical version, from which much good stuff is left out. a movie like this could well be five days long...]
       
    • ingmar bergman -- scenes from a marriage
      (c) 1973
      [not really a movie, this tv series in six instalments austerely portraits the untying of a couple and their subsequent paths, which criss-cross in more than one way. after growing apart for years in the silence of bourgeois comfort, johan (erland josephson) decides suddenly to abandon marianne (liv ullmann) and depart abroad with another woman. after enduring the initial schock (the one-scene episode in which he announces his departure is as emotionally thick as it gets) she realizes single life enables her to grow more than would have been possible as his wife. he, on the other hand, oscillates between the disenchantment of ageing alone and the inability to commit to a life he knows he does not want. both regret never having loved or having been loved. good display of contemporary emotional illiteracy. bergman spares the viewer to no discomfort; much to the contrary, he puts us through a series of endlessly painful situations. lots of unavoidable questions. forget the short theatrical version and go for the six-episode one.]
       
    • ingmar bergman -- the seventh seal
      (c) 1957
      [the greatest of bergman's early works, the seventh seal is the story of a medieval knight (antonius block / max von sidow) in his relentless quest for knowledge. early in the movie he meets death, who agrees to play a game of chess with him, and from that moment on we are all suspended from the following move, until the inevitable defeat comes. the film develops all the major bergmanian themes -- death, love, faith, etc. -- contrasting antonius with his squire, jons (gunnar bjornstrand), who lives a contented simple life. great procession sequence. stark black and white cinematography by gunnar fisher, in one of his last films for bergman. this is the warmest movie ever about dour philosophical themes. the scene in which both share milk and strawberries with a family of circus actors is one the film sequences i recall most, and most happily.]
       
    • jacques tati -- playtime
      (c) 1967
      [after the success of mon oncle and les vacances de monsieur hulot tati decided to invest everything in this project and ruined himself in the process after three years of shooting. the movie, though, is one of the most elaborate critiques of modern society i know. his alter ego, monsieur hulot, wanders through a helplessly modern set of glass, concrete, and loneliness, while flocks of tourists and jetsetters have "a good time." all is bitterly cold and impersonal, but with an ironic twist that makes loniless seem or, perhaps better, become funny. the final one-hour-plus restaurant scene is a masterpiece unto itself, with everyone enjoying themselves more and more as the whole place quite literally falls apart. tati is my favourite director in his use of colour, and this is his best work by far.]
       
    • jean vigo -- l'atalante
      (c) 1934
      [vigo directed only four movies before dying of tuberculosis the year he completed l'atalante at age 29. so this is what would be called an early work. but it is a remarkably mature film, handling all aspects of movie-making with a firm grip. like all great movies, it is simultaneously funny and touching. the story (tale?) of two newly-weds who learn how to live together on a canal barge on their way to paris. there is not much of a plot, rather vigo walks us through a series of fragile happy moments the two live on their first few days as husband and wife, moments that will remain in their (and our) memory for a long time afterwards. a disconcerting mix of naivete and powerful film-making.]
       
    • john ford -- the man who shot liberty valance
      (c) 1962
      [the last western made by ford and wayne together, liberty valance is a solid american movie. a lot of food for thought on the relationship between right and might, law and force, word and deed. jimmy stewart plays ransom stoddard, a senator who started his political career after shooting a notorious outlaw (liberty valance / lee marvin) in the wild west. problem is he didn't kill valance himself; tom doniphon (john wayne) -- a brute-force kind of guy -- did, and both did everything in their power to hide this from the world, at great personal cost to doniphon, who was competing with stoddard for the same woman's love. as he returns from washington for doniphon's funeral, stoddard tells the whole truth to a journalist, who declines to print it with the great quote, "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend."]
       
    • martin scorsese -- raging bull
      (c) 1980
      [robert de niro delivers one of the greatest performances of all-time (only comparable in my opinion to brando in streetcar) as the middleweight champ jake la motta. scorsese turns boxing into ballet. the decline and fall of la motta is beautifully displayed, as is his manichaeistic relationship with other human beings, first and foremost his wife, who is the ultimate prize he's fighting for, but whom he despises as soon as he conquers. great tale on love, sex, and violence.]
       
    • orson welles -- citizen kane
      (c) 1941
      [nothing much to say about this one, except that it seems impossible to leave it out. so many innovations all tied up in an impressive final product. the only thing missing is welles' best moment on screen -- his "cuckoo-clock speech" in carol reed's the third man: "like the fella says, in italy for 30 years under the borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced michelangelo, leonardo da vinci, and the renaissance. in switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? the cuckoo clock." kane is a renaissance movie by a renaissance man.]
       
    • peter brook -- marat / sade
      (c) 1967
      [full title: the persecution and assassination of jean-paul marat as performed by the inmates of the asylum of charenton under the direction of the marquis de sade. a filmed theater play, not a movie. script by peter weiss. peter brook directing the royal shakespeare company. patrick magee and ian richardson in the title roles plus an excellent ensemble performance. the play deals with progress and how modern, post-revolutionary man distances himself from the past. it also deals with the obvious theme of madness and the script is littered with oblique references to rousseau, nietzsche, and foucault, besides the obvious de sade. condensed meanings make it a must for anyone remotely interested in policits. or movies.]
       
    • robert flaherty -- nanook of the north
      (c) 1922
      [a turning point in the history of documentary cinema, nanook reports the life of a eskimo family during one year. one expects harsh conditions, the brutal quest for survival, beautiful landscapes, and all of that is there. but there is more: flaherty's subtle technique building the characters into more than anonymous people; and the actors themselves, consciously acting themselves out. a moment in cinema hanging between reality and fiction. ]
       
    • stanley kubrick -- barry lyndon
      (c) 1975
      [though it's difficult to pick a favourite kubrick, barry lyndon is at the top of my list. the plot is exceptional (based on w. m. thackeray's novel), the acting is good, the sets are gorgeous, and the lighting, well, suffice it to say that kubrick got nasa to lend him their apollo-program lenses, panavision to build an adaptor for their cameras, and thus he shot all night scenes with minimal lighting -- some of them true candlelight scenes -- achieving a rare degree of visual perfection. the quality of the light in the misty morning outdoor scenes is also irreproachable, making it probably the best xviii-century movie ever. the story is the tragedy of a man who tries so hard to improve his stance that he ends up much worse than he began. many complain the movie is slow and the narrator tells us what's going to happen before we see it, but as sam peckinpah remarked, "that's the goddamn point." the soundtrack revolves around the second movement of schubert's piano trio no. 2 d929, giving many scenes a great sound-and-image rhythmic structure.]
       
    • vittorio de sica -- ladri di biciclette
      (c) 1948
      [de sica's masterpiece, ladri tells in deceptively simple terms the story of a man trying to recover his stolen bicycle, which is vital for his job -- ironically for poverty-stricken post-wwii italy, that of putting-up movie posters featuring the greatest stars. like umberto d. this is a tale of desperation, in which the main character has in his son (as umberto had in his dog, flike) his only reason for hope. de sica manages to thread the narrow path between parable and drama, leaving the spectator with several good (meta)questions. this film has an endless liveliness to it, and it stands the test of time as well as any other work of art.]
       
    • yasujiro ozu -- tokyo story
      (c) 1953
      [a delicate movie depicting the gap between the cozy world of pre-capitalist japan and the anonymous career-oriented post-war life. two adults who live in tokyo have little time to spare with their elderly parents when they visit, then pack them off to a resort. but they soon hear of their mother's death and the movie turns into an open-ended meditation on mortality and, inevitably, the meaning of life. during most of the movie, though, there is a lot that makes us smile -- a bit like in ozu's good morning, another tale of inter-generational disruption caused by capitalist consumer society. and even in the final third, when the going gets rough, ozu tells us his story with warmth and delicacy, so the viewer is never led to abandon a meditative mode and engage in a more emotional attitude. which is fine.]
       

    (updated: september 2008)