Saturday, 18 May 2013

Ordet

dir. Carl Theodor Dryer
Denmark, 1955

Tuesday, 14 May 2013

Star Trek - Into Darkness

dir. J.J. Abrams
USA, 2013

Le grain et le mulet (Couscous)

dir. Abdellatif Kechiche
France, 2007

Leon Morin, Pretre

dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1961

Friday, 26 April 2013

Kramer vs. Kramer

dir. Robert Benton
USA, 1979

The Landlord

dir. Hal Ashby
USA, 1970

Network

dir. Sidney Lumet
USA, 1976

Saturday, 13 April 2013

All Good Things

dir. Andrew Jarecki
USA, 2010

The Place Beyond The Pines

dir. Derek Cianfrance
USA, 2013

American Gigolo

dir. Paul Schrader
USA, 1980

"Put it away, Gere"

Wednesday, 3 April 2013

A Place in the Sun

dir. George Stevens
USA, 1951

Silver Linings Playbook

dir. David O. Russell
USA, 2012

Side Effects

dir. Steven Soderbergh
USA, 2013

The Silence

dir. Baran bo Odar
Germany, 2010

Underground

dir. Emile de Antonio
USA, 1976

Monday, 25 March 2013

The Spirit of '45

dir. Ken Loach
UK, 2013

Saddening and angry-making history of the Welfare State.

Tout est pardonné

dir. Mia Hansen-Love
France, 2007

The first film by the director of The Father of My Children and Goodbye, First Love. All the components of these later films are there, in unsurprisingly less polished or controlled ways: long temporal periods, often with a "before/after" structure, here it's Vienna 1995, France 2006; the way the film eventually comes round to its central concern, the coming-of-age of a teenage girl, but how her 6 year-old self is peripheral in the first half except somehow you realise she's also central; the use of British folk music, somehow as a soundtrack of maturation; absent or problematic fathers. One day I'll write about this properly.

Tabu

dir. Miguel Gomes
Portugal, 2012

Literally a film of two halves. First bemusingly dull, the second - a silent film with a voice-over - a wonderful piece of cinema, as intoxicating as the first was confusing.

Tuesday, 19 March 2013

Memories of Underdevelopment

dir. Tomas Gutierrez Alea
Cuba, 1968

Rewatch: Sans Soleil

dir. Chris Marker
France, 1982