Amazing Grace

In The Phantom Carriage, director Victor Sjöström plays David Holm, a heartless unrepentant rascal who receives two summons one New Year’s midnight. The first is from a dying nun who showed him the most undeserved act of mercy he ever received; the second is from the phantom who drives Death’s titular carriage. As the film shows…

The great and final act of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s remarkable career was the production of a trilogy called Three Colors—Blue, White, and Red—that represents the colors of the French flag, and the values they represent: liberty, equality and fraternity. Filmed in three countries (France, Poland, Switzerland), their plots overlap only slightly. Watch closely, and you’ll see the different…

Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense, begins simple enough. Talking Heads front man David Byrne walks onto a bare stage and places a boombox on the ground. “Hi, I got a tape I wanna play you,” he quips. Byrne turns on the stereo and the musician’s acoustic guitar soon melds to a tight backing…

Appreciation coming.  Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard Produced by: Alain Sarde Ruth Waldburger Written by: Jean-Luc Godard Music by: Cinematography by: Julien Hirsch Christophe Pollock Editing by: Raphaele Urtin Release Date: 2001 Running Time: 97 Language: French Arts & Faith Lists: 2010 Top 100 — #94 2020 Top 100 — #69

This classic, brilliantly colorful film from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger follows five nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, into the Himalayas to start a hospital and school for the local villagers. The battle against the elements and the local culture proves to be a formidable one, though Sister Clodagh’s most difficult tasks comes from within—through…

Marc Rothemund’s fact-based Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a riveting portrait of a young woman of formidable intellect, dogged self-possession, and excruciatingly steady nerves. At 21, Sophia Magdalena Scholl (Julia Jentsch) is old enough to have outgrown the brash overconfidence of immaturity, but not too old for the purity and ardor of youthful idealism. She is…