Similar Posts

  • The Apu Trilogy

    Between 1955 and 1991, Indian director Satyajit Ray made more than thirty feature films, but he’s best remembered in the West for the “Apu trilogy,” which launched his career. Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) are based on the novels of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya and follow their hero, Apu, from his impoverished childhood in a small Bengali village through…

  • The Grapes of Wrath

    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 early passage from the novel seems to lay bare the…

  • The Gleaners & I

    Agnès Varda tells as much about her own experiences and feelings growing older as she does about the history and practice of gleaning, an occupation that has itself grown old. By placing herself as the documentary’s ultimate gleaner, she collects wisdom about her subjects, her environment and herself and then shares it with her audience….

  • Faust

    A useful starting point when approaching Friedrich Wilhelm (F. W.) Murnau’s Faust is Rembrandt’s 1652 etching of the same name. In it, we see Faust alone in his library, poring through parchments, surrounded on all sides by scientific paraphernalia. But Rembrandt pays little attention to the things in the room and, instead, directs our focus toward Faust’s desperate…

  • Paths of Glory

    Classifying Paths of Glory as an anti-war film is the result of lazy thinking. Shot in simple black-and-white in 1957, this is the film that put director Stanley Kubrick on the map, and there’s a very good reason why. While loosely based on a true story referred to as the “Corporals of Souain” during World War I…

  • Timbuktu

    Review coming. Directed by: Abderrahmane Sissako Produced by: Rémi Burah Etienne Comar Sylvie Pialat Olivier Père Benoît Quainon Gilles Sitbon Written by:Abderrahmane Sissako Kessen Tall Music by: Amin Bouhafa Cinematography by: Sofian El Fani Editing by: Nadia Ben Rachid Release Date: 2014 Running Time: 96 Language: French, Arabic, English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top…