At the time when it was still new, Charles Chaplin called The Gold Rush, from 1925, the film he wanted to be remembered for. He’s gotten his wish, and then some – we still remember The Gold Rush along with City Lights, Modern Times, The Kid, The Circus, and so on, and will undoubtedly do […]
After releasing Three Colors: Red in summer 1994, Krzysztof Kieślowski announced that he was done making movies. It took his premature death from a heart attack less than two years later to seal that promise (I am, invariably, dubious about any artist’s “retirement” while they are still able-bodied and of sound mind), but even without […]
Conventional wisdom holds that Three Colors: White is the least among the Three Colors trilogy, and I guess that I agree with that assessment. I suppose that it’s possible to have a least-favorite panel of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, too, and about as useful to the field of arts criticism. The particular reasons that White […]
The first thing one must not do with swan song of the great Krzysztof Kieślowski, Three Colors, is to reduce it to a simple puzzle of symbolism. This is something one really must not do with a great many films, of course, but in the case of Three Colors, the temptation is unusually high, given […]
Be sure to check out the companion review of the 1998 remake! Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is one of the handful of most important films ever made. That is hyperbole, but the film invites hyperbole. And just because it’s hyperbole, doesn’t mean it’s not also accurate: we need to divide classic from modern cinema somewhere, and […]
Part of the Italian Horror Blogathon at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies Suspiria is not just AN Italian horror movie – it is THE Italian horror movie. The best-known, the most widely-seen and widely-discussed, the one held to typify the style of Italian horror the most; the last of which, at least, is profoundly unfair, because […]
It is frequently proposed that Some Like It Hot is the best movie comedy ever made, and those looking for an iconoclastic opinion on this front will, I am afraid, need to look elsewhere. For it is the best movie comedy of all time, says I, and only partially because it is the funniest. Which […]
The obvious thing is to talk about Blade Runner as though it were nothing but an exercise in style for style’s sake on the part of director Ridley Scott; and while we prefer to do what is not obvious here, even when it means making the sort of contortions of logic and expression that really […]
Since Ordet is all about the Big Questions, I don’t see any reason not to lead off my review of it with Grand Statements all my own – though since the movie is anything but hyberbolic, I do so with a fair and appropriate degree of shame. First, it is the greatest movie about religion, […]
For some time now, I’ve had people raising the question, “When are you going to review Jaws?” because as we are all aware, there are not nearly enough reviews of Jaws in this world. That said, I am not immune to begging, and when the slowest week for new releases in several months stumbled into […]
Once Upon a Time in the West opens with a sequence of about 14 minutes or a touch under, that functions very much like a short film prequel to the movie proper, and it is as such the best film of director Sergio Leone’s career. I would very much like to call it the best […]
Matt Henderson donated to the Carry On Campaign with these words: “No real essay to commission, but I will gently nudge you into considering a Malick retrospective”. Absolutely no nudge was necessary: I’ve been planning on doing this ever since the day The Tree of Life was announced. Still, I’m glad to dedicate the following […]
