Although I've seen people call this a realistic movie, nothing in it strikes me as real, in the sense of photographic realness that captures an event accurately.
Seen through the eyes of a 13-14 year old protagonist, with a wandering, moving camera that itself feels like a real participant in the movie (and thus the movie's persuasion is very powerful -- you feel like you are there with everyone), "Come and See" depicts a wartime nightmare of what it feels…
"Blue" is less a formal movie than a visual lyric dedicated to grief. You could say that the main character suffers terrible loss and, as the plot goes, she deals with it. That's it.
But wait, Kieslowski structured these Three Colors films around the French Revolution's three values, even though he downplayed that, and "Blue" is about liberty. I'm one to think that his movies, whether Three Colors or Decalogue, are in fact profound meditations on their topic.
How is…
You've heard of "American Psycho," and this film could be aptly titled "British Psycho," albeit circa 1949.
Dennis Price plays an heir to a dukedom, although there are eight relatives in between him and that title, all played by Alec Guinness. Price is going to knock them off all one by one.
The movie's frame narrative is that Price's character has been caught, tried, and sentenced to execution. He'll die at 8am the next day, so in prison he's writing…
This is one of the better films of the year, a favorite for me.
I say "favorite" with caution. This "All Quiet" is one of the few war films where it's nearly impossible to watch it as inadvertently glorifying war, a constant problem when war is depicted on the silver screen.
This film seems aware of all of its predecessors at once, and yet it has its own aesthetic. A film lover will recognize how so many shots or scenes…
The primary reason I go to movies is to be wowed. To be wowed is to be given the gift of insight into something, although sometimes, for awhile after the film, it's not clear what that something is.
I have not seen a movie this remarkable in a long time. It blends an emotional core with wild expressionism. You could say that it wants us to have great fun at the movies while wanting to give us a feeling of…
