Eleventh Hour, Year Zero: My 10 Favorite Italian Neorealist Movies
The question of how to define a neorealist film, much on my mind for the first five months of this year, received unexpected clarification just under two weeks ago. For […]
Tag Archives: French New Wave
An Enterprise of Great Pitch and Moment: My 10 Favorite Hamlet Movies
Probably the main reason that Hamlet has been such a popular subject for cinema from its very beginning — besides representing a grasp for artistic legitimacy in those early days, and […]
Announcing My 2020 Movie Retrospective: Hamlet on Film
Shakespearean cinema, like many of the other subjects I’ve approached in my annual film retrospectives, is something in which I’ve long wanted to become more fluent. There are boundless avenues […]
Double Feature: High Noon and Cléo from 5 to 7
A straight stretch of train tracks extend into oblivion, their iron rumbling with a whispered threat. In the gentle town nearby, two solemn and innocent ceremonies take place at the […]
Double Feature: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and La La Land
Among the current decade’s crop of movie neo-musicals, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land stands apart for tapping into traditions uniquely native to film. That is to say, it’s a song-and-dance extravaganza […]
Double Feature: Persona and Daisies
It must be a frightening concept to men—this idea of women having a special bond, of women containing multitudes… Men, spellbound by the secrets shared between women, can’t help but […]
Both Versions: Goodbye to Language
For the final entry in my “Both Versions” blog series, I’ll be breaking one of my major rules. For every preceding film, the competing versions were each released theatrically at […]
Double Feature: The Trial and Alphaville
Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard presented their visions of sclerotic authoritarianism just a few years apart, with the American director entering the final phase of his filmmaking career and the […]
Double Feature: They’re young. They’re in love. And they kill people.
The New Hollywood, it was called. Inspired by similar movements in Europe, a new generation of filmmakers took advantage of the faltering studio system to produce personal, vital, politically relevant […]
The Class of 2015: My Favorite Movies of All Time
Back in the summer of 2010, I saw my thousandth movie. It had taken more than twenty-two years. At some point in the next couple months, I’ll double that. In […]
Geppetto's Clocks 