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Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)
Life is a circus that creates entertainment out of humiliation, Ingmar Bergman posits in Sawdust and Tinsel, and in his rich staging and screenwriting he needles its existential drama with a finer, wittier point than ever before, finding both sympathy and pity for its hapless fools doomed to eternal ridicule.
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2016 in Cinema
Damien Chazelle’s ode to Hollywood musicals becomes one of the genre’s best, Jim Jarmusch’s impressively formal work celebrates the beauty of routine, and Denis Villeneuve finds a new linguistic spin on the alien science-fiction film.
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Close (2022)
Close is a work of incredible mourning and devoted realism for Lukas Dhont, telling the tale of two childhood friends driven apart by the social pressures of adolescent masculinity, and often leaving the most profound emotions unspoken as we silently sit in understated reaction shots connecting them to a confusing, corrupt world.
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Knock at the Cabin (2023)
The existential dilemma one small family must make to either sacrifice one of their own or unleash Armageddon drives a taut tension through Knock at the Cabin, and by wrapping this home invasion story up in a stifling visual style, the cosmic stakes of M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological horror feel both arrestingly claustrophobic and dauntingly…
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2015 in Cinema
Leonardo DiCaprio transforms into a spirit animal in Alejandro Iñárritu’s awe-inspiring revisionist western, George Miller makes a high-octane career comeback, and Adam McKay turns the Global Financial Crisis into an audacious piece of cinema.
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La Promesse (1996)
The Dardenne Brothers prove their dedication to social realism in La Promesse, tying their narrative up into knotty moral predicaments around one teenager’s vow to a dying, undocumented immigrant, and through its tiny symbolic developments it progresses with archetypal formality, pushing him to be better than the unjust world he grew up in.
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The English Patient (1996)
Wistful memories and melancholy regrets swirl all through The English Patient’s vast, time-leaping narrative, developing its gentle ruminations over national identity into a historical epic of extraordinary beauty, as Anthony Minghella uses the sprawling emptiness of the desert to underscore the majesty and romance of the larger-than-life characters traversing it.
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2014 in Cinema
Alejandro Iñárritu’s studies celebrity and ego in his one-take wonder, Wes Anderson throws back to mid-century Budapest with his immaculate pastel artistry, and Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age epic breaks new ground in realist cinema.
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Broken Blossoms (1919)
Broken Blossoms may be a simple, tragic fable of ill-fated lovers, though such eloquent visual poetry refreshes its archetypes through crisp close-ups and propulsive editing, inviting the sort of intimacy that D.W. Griffith alone realised in these early years of cinema was uniquely suited to this young, nascent artform.
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2013 in Cinema
Paweł Pawlikowski delivers a haunting meditation on the long-lasting trauma of the Holocaust, Richard Linklater ties off his decades-spanning Before trilogy, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s neon-tinted violence heavily polarises audiences.
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Forty Guns (1957)
Forty Guns draws significantly from the cultural mythology around lawman Wyatt Earp’s restoration of order to the town of Tombstone, though in Samuel Fuller’s eccentric visual expressions and complex characters, touches of bitterness and sensitivity are brought to this refreshing, female-centric revision of the Old West.
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Bellissima (1951)
In Bellissima’s unconventional blend of Italian neorealism and comedic satire, Luchino Visconti takes sharp aim at the ludicrous glorification of the entertainment industry, identifying an authentic connection between one effusive show mum’s pursuit of stardom for her daughter, and her struggles of post-war poverty.
