Despite its sci-fi trappings and high-concept premise, the 2009 drama Moon is primarily an understated character piece about isolation, personal identity, and the dehumanizing oppression of unchecked corporate greed. Unlike most science fiction cinema these days, the film has no action scenes and no suspense-filled set-pieces of note. Mostly, it’s a one-man showcase for character… Read More Where Are We Now? | Moon (2009)
Released way back in the distant past of 1983, Scottish filmmaker Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero concerns a major industrial corporation’s attempt to buy up the land in a rural community in order to strip it of all natural resources, unconcerned with what effects that will have on the environment or local culture. Thankfully, it’s a… Read More A Little Time Is All We Have Left | Local Hero (1983) Criterion Blu-ray
If technically Stanley Kubrick’s second feature film, the director almost entirely disowned his first (1952’s Fear and Desire) and considered Killer’s Kiss to be the start of his filmmaking career. Made when he was just 27-years-old, the noir thriller is clearly a formative work, unpolished and lacking either the intellectual or technical rigor Kubrick would… Read More Kubrick in Progress | Killer’s Kiss (1955) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece 8 ½ is remembered, rightly so, as a defining work of Surrealist cinema. Part of that film’s genius is the way its fantastical elements are rooted in an autobiographical confession for the director’s own personal flaws, self-absorption, and lousy treatment of the women in his life. Attempting at least somewhat of… Read More Perception and Reality Are Two Different Things | Juliet of the Spirits (1965) Criterion Blu-ray
As Christopher Nolan has increasingly focused on huge and bombastic IMAX spectacles, almost to the point that he’ll soon have nowhere bigger left to go, his very small and intimate 2002 thriller Insomnia often gets lost in the arc of the director’s career. Even though I doubt many fans would say they dislike it, when… Read More Late Nights Gettin’ to You? | Insomnia (2002)
I’ve liked, loved, disliked, or hated countless movies over the years. I’ve felt indifferent to many others. Never before have I had an experience like watching House (or Hausu if you prefer), the 1977 Japanese cult film about a group of annoying teenage girls who get trapped in a haunted or demon-infested mansion. I’m left… Read More It’s Unscientific, Unexplainable, Unnatural, Unreasonable | House (1977) Criterion Blu-ray
Jim Jarmusch might not be the first name one would consider to direct a hitman thriller. In most of his early work, such as Stranger Than Paradise or Mystery Train, the indie auteur established a very laconic style of character drama mostly lacking much in the way of plot or… well… drama. Today, we’d probably… Read More The Poetry of War | Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) Criterion Blu-ray
Hilariously, during an early scene in Brian De Palma’s 1978 supernatural thriller The Fury, a character actually says out loud, “No particular talent is needed to achieve.this.” Wow, could a better summation of the movie exist? That’s it right there. Review over. The end. No, I’ll go on a little if I must. The Fury… Read More Anybody Can Achieve Alpha | The Fury (1978) Blu-ray
A title like Experiment in Terror seems primed for disappointment six decades and change later. Could any film from 1962 actually scare a jaded audience conditioned by modern horror movies to expect graphic violence and gore from something with a name like that? Perhaps not, even probably not, especially once you tell those same viewers… Read More I’m Fairly Well Conditioned to Shock | Experiment in Terror (1962) Blu-ray
In many interviews and talks, Peter Greenaway has declared with some certainty and no small amount of pomposity that narrative and character development are not only inessential, but weaknesses of the cinematic medium. He treats his work not as “movies” in the widely-accepted sense, but as a form of visual art in motion, the sort… Read More A Hundred Is Enough | Drowning by Numbers (1988) 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
