Appreciation coming. Directed by: William Wyler Produced by: Samuel GoldwynLester Koenig Written by: Robert E. SherwoodMacKinlay Kantor Music by: Hugo Friedhofer Cinematography by: Greg Toland Editing by: Daniel Mandell Release Date: 1946 Running Time: 170 Language: English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top 100 — Read More …
We must decide to be human. In the People’s Square, before a great crowd of witnesses and in representing them, we must make the decision to be wholly human. Wim Wenders’ wonderful and dreamlike 1987 fantasy, Der Himmel über Berlin, portrays two angels observing the people Read More …
Appreciation coming. Directed by: Alan Elliot Sydney Pollack Produced by: Written by: Music by: Cinematography by: Editing by: Jeff Buchanan Release Date: 2018 Running Time: 89 Language: English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top 100 — #46
L’Avventura (1960) has long been known as the first feature in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “alienation” trilogy, which includes La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962). Yet the term “alienation” is too simple and too succinct a descriptor; this film is about emotional, social, and spiritual enervation, about something nightmarish. The inhabitants of Read More …
Until very late in Yasujiro Ozu’s film Tokyo Story, there is no crisis more dramatic than some uncomfortable silences. So what is it that makes this film one of the most revered dramas ever crafted? It’s the simplest of stories: An elderly couple—Shukichi and Tomi—drop in Read More …
Appreciation coming from Darren Hughes. Directed by: William A. Wellman Produced by: Written by: Wilson Mizner Robert Lord Gerald Beaumont Lillie Hayward John Francis Larkin Music by: Cinematography by: Sidney Hickox Editing by: James B. Morley Release Date: 1932 Running Time: 73 Language: English Arts Read More …
“You gotta laugh, ain’t ya sweetheart? Else you’d cry.” This observation from working-class Londoner Cynthia Rose Purley (Brenda Blethyn) is a perfect summary of the tone running through Mike Leigh’s Palme d’Or-winning melodramatic masterpiece. A slice-of-life portrayal of broken individuals navigating the complexity of their familial ties, Secrets & Read More …
We’ve seen some powerful, horrifying films about the war in Rwanda. But we’ve never seen anything like this—a film made with the help of Rwandans, informed by their own experiences, and performed in their own language. Sangwa’s a prodigal son of the Hutu. He’s come Read More …
What is the relationship between military duty and human emotion? Clare Denis explores this dichotomy in her film Beau Travail, an adaption of the Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd transported to post-colonial Africa. Beau Travail tells the story of Galoup, an officer leading a troop of the French Foreign Read More …
John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath opens with a view of the “scarred earth,” then lifts its eyes to consider the scarred people that lived on that earth. It finds these people staggering through the Dust Bowl storms that struck the Southern U.S. in the 1930’s. This Read More …