My grandma saw The Dybbuk in theaters at nine years old. Tonight, 84 years later, we watched The Dybbuk on her television, in her room as we ate dinner together. It is an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.
The Dybbuk was filmed in Poland 17 years after the last of my blood relatives left the old country. There’s little I can know about the day-to-day lives and beliefs of my direct ancestors, and though this…
“Among the many extraordinary things that [British intelligence officer Nicholas] Elliot had done in his life, however, the most extraordinary and undoubtedly the most painful was to sit face-to-face in Beirut with his close friend, colleague and mentor Kim Philby, and hear him admit that he had been a Soviet spy for all the years that they had known each other…
… no amount of the caustic levity that was his stock-in-trade was going to take away the pain of…
Lives in the center of a Venn diagram comprised of Frederick Wiseman (minutely observed human teams and communities, cognizant of cultural context, focused on process, patiently paced edit) and Minecraft (serenely placed in nature, delighted by subterranean exploration, charmed by village life, likewise focused on process).
The world constantly exhales.
I think a lot about about something Douglas Sirk said in an interview, especially when an ending appears to tie up something distressing with a take-home message.
"In Imitation of Life you don’t believe the happy ending, and you’re not really supposed to. Everything seems to be O.K., but you well know it isn’t."
(I remember being told this quotation as a question, and I prefer it that way: 'do you believe the happy ending?')
Final beats here are by…
I, uh, hated it
edit (11/01/18):
This is quickly becoming my most liked review ever and I’m not thrilled with the thought of that distinction going to a review made up of four words and two punctuation marks (give my Cameraperson review a like instead!). I want to expand on why Suspiria not only did not click with me, but why the script misses the mark for its character development and its thematic, political commentary. The latter is the objectively…
Some movies feel like they're made for you-- they perfectly reflect your thoughts and feelings at the moment in your life when you view them. Cameraperson is that for me, now. It elaborates and ruminates on methods of filmmaking that I practice in my life.
Assembled from pieces of extra footage collected by veteran documentary DP Kirsten Johnson, and thoughtfully edited together by Nels Bangerter, Cameraperson moves through distinct times and places, moments of beauty, horror, and intimacy, to create what…
