This Hou Hsiao-hsien arthouse wuxia drama, set during the Tang dynasty of 9th century China, centers on an exiled princess-turned-assassin (Shu Qi) assigned to kill her cousin Tian Ji’an (Chang Chen), a military governor in the province of Weibo. Continue reading “The Assassin (2015)”
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)
Tsai Ming-liang’s bleak comic masterpiece is a portrait of the alienation of modern urbanity. Continue reading “Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)”
Barfly (1987)
Charles Bukowski, the great American poet and novelist of dirty urban realism, was famously contemptuous of movies, but put aside his prejudices when writing the screenplay for Barbet Schroeder’s Barfly. Continue reading “Barfly (1987)”
The Best Films of 2020
Admittedly I used the pandemic as an opportunity to watch older films rather than new ones, erasing some major blindspots for myself (including The Red Shoes, Ordet, Céline and Julie Go Boating, and Dekalog) and revisiting several of my favorite pictures (The Big Heat, Alice in the Cities, and Stagecoach). Continue reading “The Best Films of 2020”
Being There (1979)
In one of his final roles, Peter Sellers stars as Chance, a mentally challenged, illiterate gardener who becomes a media darling and political superstar after a billionaire mistakes his mindless gibberish as complex socioeconomic dialogue. Continue reading “Being There (1979)”
NYFF: Hopper/Welles (2020) & The Tango of the Widower and its Distorting Mirror (2020)
This year’s New York Film Festival greets us with newly released films by two of the most renown filmmakers of the 20th century, Orson Welles and Raúl Ruiz. Recently these two late directors have been surprisingly prolific, with Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, having spent decades in post-production hell over disputes of its ownership, receiving a belated release by Netflix in 2018; meanwhile, Ruiz, who passed away in 2011, had his final film Night Across the Street posthumously distributed in 2012 while his widow Valeria Sarmiento supervised a reconstruction of his lost picture The Wandering Shadow (2017).
Continue reading “NYFF: Hopper/Welles (2020) & The Tango of the Widower and its Distorting Mirror (2020)”Woyzeck (1979)
Werner Herzog’s adaptation of Georg Büchner’s unfinished 19th century play is an often beguiling if muddled character drama. Continue reading “Woyzeck (1979)”
Fantômas (1913 – 1914)
A legendary cinematic achievement of early silent cinema, Louis Feuillade’s hefty Fantômas serial is a cultural touchstone of a pre-WWI France. Continue reading “Fantômas (1913 – 1914)”
Hell in the Pacific (1968)
John Boorman’s magnificent follow-up to Point Blank centers on two unnamed WWII soldiers (Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune) stranded on a remote Pacific island who must put aside their nationalistic ideologies to survive. Continue reading “Hell in the Pacific (1968)”
Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)
Jacques Rivette’s tribute to Frank Tashlin, Hollywood musicals, and Alfred Hitchcock, Céline and Julie Go Boating is a plethora of comic raucousness, a surreal, uproarious three-hour farce that celebrates exuberance and the human spirit. Continue reading “Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)”
