Letterboxd — Your life in film

Perhaps I noticed the contrast simply because I had watched Robert Bresson’s L’ARGENT for the first time last month, but the comparisons between what’s essentially Max Ophüls’ D’OREILLES (officially THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE…) offers a glimpse on the stark differences between the two works. Both have a distinct European sensibility (albeit the former with post-’68 Marxism against the latter’s La Belle Époque nobility) and both elicit the effects of the titular object as it moves from person to person.…

All my years of watching Ingmar Bergman’s films did not prepare me for SAWDUST AND TINSEL, with its bombastic barrage of expressionist images and freewheeling depiction of circus life. The film came out early enough in the director’s career that scenes are not drowned out by dreary philosophical monologues but instead punch with the power of their gnarly visuals. Puddles are disturbed by feet and rain. A face glistens with sweat and another balloons with a Cheshire Cat grin. There…

The Matrix franchise, it turns out, is something like the Matrix itself – forever veering towards a crash-and-reboot process. The series' second entry, THE MATRIX RELOADED, gurgles from the philosophical fountain that was the first entry. It’s not about red pill, blue pill anymore but about the choice between saving the Matrix or saving Trinity. The onion has been peeled and it’s just another layer of onion. Neo, the Architect asserts, is simply a server daemon meant to wake up…

Prior to watching the 1996 original, my experience with the Mission: Impossible movies came solely from McQuarrie's set piece extravaganzas. So in a way I was ready to get my socks blown off from another round of "what death-defying stunts did Tom Cruise do this time?" The stunts in this film, it turns out, are humble in comparison to those attempted in the later entries. There are still noteworthy set pieces (Prague and Langley) that set the blueprint for the…

Another slick and focused political thriller, the meat and potatoes of 1970s cinema, THE DAY OF THE JACKAL depicts an attempted assassination of French president Charles de Gaulle. The movie has a European point of view and grants as much screen time to the calculated movement of the assassin as it does the government officials tasked with bringing him down. Edward Fox portrays the titular assassin (codenamed "Jackal") with an air of posh suavity which belies a ruthlessness revealed only…

Some time ago, I had mentally filed Tim Burton's films into the same realm as works like CORALINE or THE WITCHES. These are macabre tales that are simple enough for children to follow, but so casually detailed in their depiction of the unfathomable that generations were left mentally scarred. Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my judgment, as CORPSE BRIDE offers more whimsy, e.g. jazzy skeleton dance number!, than anything actually nightmarish. Even the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD…

This is John Ford’s boisterous ode to Ireland’s rolling hills and fiery redheads, and Ford transplants his mythical image-crafting to the beauty of the Emerald Isle. Viewers will witness Maureen O’Hara shepherding whilst barefoot in the grass, a preacher man battling the elusive salmon of the river, and Victor McLaglen spitting out a loose tooth during a pause in the climactic fisticuffs. The movie’s message is conservative – about folding one’s principles (primarily not accepting your wife’s dowry) and bending…

And sometimes cinema just needs a 25-year-old wunderkind and his posse of equally passionate friends to push the language of filmmaking into hyperspace. After this rewatch, my first since the early days of my full blown film obsession in 2017, CITIZEN KANE is somehow even better than I remember. And in comparison to other early-1940s films, Welles' legendary Hollywood debut seems especially remarkable in its technical depth and dramatic roundness. To put it simply, it was a total vibe shift.…

Among writer-director Preston Sturges' world of remarkable side characters there inhabits a magnanimous wienie king, a flirtatious millionaire sister, and her emasculated European lover. The motley crew of oddballs, grifters, and loveable buffoons in THE PALM BEACH STORY emphasizes how warmhearted such a hustle of a movie could be. It is only the Coens and their penchant for farce who pick up Sturges' embrace of secondary characters decades down the line. Of course, when a movie relies on the aforementioned…