Harmony Korine stated somewhere that the characters from his film Gummo, he found, were “transcendentally beautiful.” It is unclear just what the so-called “beauty” of the characters transcends. Korine has…
Onibaba (Demon Woman) from Kaneto Shindo is uncannily similar to Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, released in the same year. These are “art films,” as the saying goes, rich…
…allegedly, his favorites.
Tarsem Singh’s previous film The Cell was an exercise in psychoanalytic cinema at the most un-subtle possible level, as well as in really poor casting (Vince Vaughn as a P.I.,…
The same year as the previous post’s film was released (8½, in 1963) Luchino Visconti adapted to the screen The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), the novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. Was…
The argument is out there that 8½ (Otto e mezzo) is not an autobiographical film and should not be interpreted thus. Cited as evidence is the thematic dialogue within the…
Being filmed only a couple years after Lifeboat, it’s not hard to see Notorious, among many other things, as Hitchcock’s forgiveness and vindication of the German people following World War…
Andrew, this one’s for you. Having never seen Walk the Line and having a general distaste for films of the musical biopic genre, it would have taken and did in…
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind probably takes the cake as the best Valentine’s Day movie ever. After a thorough scouring of our (ever-growing) shelf, it became clear how few…
With every beginning to every movement, exaggerations of description abound. For all the importance of Roberto Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City) in setting a precedent for Italian Neorealism,…
A quick list of the most epic epics would have to include (but of course not be limited to): Ran, Lawrence of Arabia, 1900, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Seven Samurai,…
In Alfred Hitchcock’s world, nothing is more certain than death and attempts to cover up death. This seems to be a common thread from Lawrence Olivier’s character in Rebecca all…
