Stars: Virginie Ledoyen, Cyprien Fouquet, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, László Szabó, Smaïl Mekki | Written and Directed by Olivier Assayas This 1994 film from Olivier Assayas (known recently for Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper) ends ambiguously, with a blank piece of paper. It’s an image that aptly sums up this intriguing yet frustrating film as […]
Stars: Paul Whiteman, John Boles, The Rhythm Boys, Laura La Plante, Jeanette Loff | Written by Harry Ruskin | Directed by John Murray Anderson John Murray Anderson’s sole foray into cinema was this lavish revue, released in 1930. It missed the zeitgeist and bombed at the box office and Anderson retreated to the theatre thereafter. […]
Stars: Andie MacDowell, James Spader, Laura San Giacomo, Peter Gallagher | Written and Directed by Steven Soderbergh Another chance to see where it all began for (a then 26-year-old) Steven Soderbergh comes in the form of this sumptuous box set from Criterion. They might have missed a trick by not housing it in a Betmax-style […]
Stars: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Anjelica Huston | Written by Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach | Directed by Wes Anderson “This is an adventure.” That’s the last spoken line of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the fourth feature from everyone’s favourite Texan oddball, Wes Anderson. Released in 2004, three […]
Stars: Ken Ogata, Masayuki Shionoya, Junkichi Orimoto, Naoko Ôtani, Masato Aizawa, Gô Rijû | Written by Paul Schrader, Leonard Schrader, Chieko Schrader | Directed by Paul Schrader Lucasfilm isn’t just about lightsabers, high fantasy and hunky archaeologists, you know. Occasionally it has produced films like this one: Paul Schrader’s truly original biopic about the Japanese author Yukio […]
Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Georgann Johnson | Written by Waldo Salt | Directed by John Schlesinger “Where’s that Joe Buck?” the Texan locals ask. Here he is: it’s Jon Voight, a New Yorker playing a Deep Southern wannabe gigolo in flamboyant cowboy getup. Voight looks as pretty as his daughter […]
Stars: Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina, Chris Eigeman, Taylor Nichols, Allison Parisi | Written and Directed by Whit Stillman One might think of Whit Stillman’s minor hit debut as the uptown, Eastside answer to Richard Linklater’s Slacker, which was also released in 1990. Between them they set the template for many a late-century indie: a loose […]
Stars: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Cecil Cunningham, Armand Duvalle | Written by Viña Delmar | Directed by Leo McCarey Cary Grant plays Jerry Warriner, a New York socialite who’s just returned from a Florida vacation. We meet him bragging in the locker room: “What wives don’t know won’t hurt them!” Jerry’s Wife, Lucy […]
Stars: Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Serrault, Michel Galabru, Carmen Scarpitta, Remi Laurent | Written by Jean Poiret, Marcello Danon, Francis Veber, Edouard Molinaro | Directed by Edouard Molinaro Modern audiences may be familiar with The Birdcage, the 1996 US remake starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. That film’s success should not have been a surprise because […]
Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard E. Grant, Stuart Wilson | Written by Martin Scorsese, Jay Cocks | Directed by Martin Scorsese After the sprawling brutality of Goodfellas and the operatic horror of Cape Fear, Martin Scorsese dove into this adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1920s novel, which is set amongst the society darlings […]
Stars: Nien-Jen Wu, Issei Ogata, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Su-Yun Ko, Adrian Lin | Written and Directed by Edward Yang Taiwanese writer-director Edward Yang’s final film starts with an ironically schmaltzy piano score playing over a scene of a slightly dismal wedding. It immediately sets the arch, bittersweet tone of the film to come. A […]
Stars: Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, Ray Liotta, Dana Preu, Margaret Colin | Written by E. Max Frye | Directed by Jonathan Demme Jonathan Demme was one of the great names of cinema lost in the terrible artistic purge of 2017. His last film of note might have been the forgettable Ricki and the Flash, but […]
Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Keith Wayne, Russell Streiner | Written by George A. Romero, John A. Russo | Directed by George A. Romero For many of us, Night of the Living Dead is a film we first experienced on late-night TV – some grizzled old print squashed onto a tiny CRT. Now, […]
Stars: Nikolay Burlyaev, Evgeniy Zharikov, Valentin Zubkov, Valentina Malyavina | Written by Vladimir Bogomolov, Mikhail Papava | Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky If Solaris was Andrei Tarkovsky’s answer to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey then Ivan’s Childhood could be his answer to Kubrick’s Fear and Desire. Both were feature debuts concerning war-haunted soldiers waxing philosophical […]
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Durante, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters | Written by William Rose, Tania Rose | Directed by Stanley Kramer If you are a fan of comedy films, you’ll already know that It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is one of the […]
Stars: James Aubrey, Tom Chapin, Hugh Edwards, Tom Gaman | Written and Directed by Peter Brook Peter Brook is best known for his work in theatre, but his 1963 screen adaptation of William Golding’s English Lit classic is no quaint repertory effort. Made relatively cheaply (the opening plane crash is literally a photograph of a […]
Stars: Chhabi Biswas, Gangapada Bose, Kali Sarkar, Padma Devi | Written and Directed by Satyajit Ray After the commercial failure of the second part of his Apu Trilogy, Bengali auteur Satyajit Ray opted for more commercially viable material for his next project. He turned to writer Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, and a short story about a landlord […]
Stars: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Alisa Freindlich | Written by Boris Strugatsky, Arkadi Strugatsky | Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Based on Boris and Arkadi Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic (not to mention the inspiration behind a famous video game series), this 1979 epic is a typically challenging work from Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, but […]
Stars: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Martin Balsam, Ed Begley, Jack Warden | Written by Reginald Rose | Directed by Sidney Lumet It’s the hottest day of the year and a dozen men – not universally perturbed at this point – are put in a room and asked to consider the guilt […]
Stars: Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Ken Watanabe, Rikiya Yasuoka | Written and Directed by Juzo Itami The life and death of actor and director Juzo Itami is an incredible story in itself (he was allegedly killed by the Yakuza following his gangster movie Minbo), but he was no slouch in putting bizarre stories on the […]
Stars: Kinuyo Tanaka, Toshiaki Onoe, Benkei Shiganoya, Tsukie Matsuura | Written by Kenji Mizoguchi, Yoshikata Yoda | Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi The overarching Buddhist message of Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1952 epic should provide a clue as to the sheer depth of misery our eponymous heroine must endure in her lifetime. Death, and another chance in the […]
