Monsieur Vincent

Review coming.  Directed by: Ming-liang Tsai Produced by: Laurence Picollec Chinlin Hsieh Bruno Pesery Written by: Ming-liang Tsai Pi-ying Yang Music by: Cinematography by: Benoît Delhomme Editing by: Sheng-Chang Chen Release Date: 2001 Running Time: 116 Language: Mandarin, French, Min Nan, English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top 100 — #98

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s celebrated feature-length debut is a story about two brothers who must decide whether to trust the stranger who suddenly arrives in their home claiming to be their father. As the sons argue about how to respond, they follow this stranger out on what they believe will be a fishing trip. It becomes something…

Before he became an Oscar-winning filmmaker, Denys Arcand was an historian. And some of his first historical projects—such as a government-sponsored documentary about Samuel de Champlain, one of the founding fathers of Canada—got him into trouble with the powers that be, who felt he didn’t toe the official line as closely as he should have. …

From the first Arts & Faith Top 100 list in 2004, voters have wrestled with and disputed the meaning of “Spiritually Significant.” When discussing what makes a film spiritually significant, seemingly the only constant has been that it means something other that craftsmanship or artistry. Sight & Sound’s critics’ survey of the Top 100 Films of all…

Drawing upon a semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, Isao Takahata’s animated masterwork Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of two orphans caught in the middle of the firebombing that decimated the cities of Japan in the final months of World War Two. Seita is in many ways an ideal big brother, adoring and protecting his…

“I feel like it should mean nothing or everything,” Travis says of the Christianity that he sees professed by others and lived by Martin, “and I can’t get to either place.”  This is Martin Bonner is the rare recent film where Christian characters talk like Christians I know. Martin has been hurt by the church….