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One Week (1920)
Marriage is not meant to be a one-size-fits-all package, as Buster Keaton so amusingly illustrates in his silent short One Week, demonstrating a level of comedic genius in his architectural inventiveness, creative framing, and wildly physical stunt work that explores the unique cinematic potential of visual comedy in the early days of film.
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A Short Film About Killing (1988)
The vision of Warsaw that Krzysztof Kieslowski presents in A Short Film About Killing is a barren wasteland of mud and shadows, strained through a sickly, jaundiced filter that unnervingly reveals the truly grotesque horror in justifying the malevolent destruction of human life.
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The Souvenir Part II (2021)
If its precursor was an examination of a young filmmaker’s first love, then Joanna Hogg counterpoints that in The Souvenir Part II with a thoughtful, autobiographical study of her first major loss, deconstructing the artistic and grieving processes with a keen meta-awareness and sharp compositional eye.
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The Souvenir (2019)
There is a quiet frustration in seeing haughty intellectual Anthony emotionally manipulate ambitious film student Julie in The Souvenir, and although it is clear which one Joanna Hogg holds more affection towards, her autobiographical self-reflection on toxic young love takes a touchingly nuanced understanding of the matter in its gentle pacing and affecting character work.
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Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
The three days we spend within freshman Jake’s microcosmic college bubble seems to stretch out in eternal bliss, a period which Richard Linklater delights in with richly defined characters lightly treading the line between hedonism and intellectualism, evolving Everybody Wants Some!! into an unhurried study of Generation X masculinity in all its youthful idealism.
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Bergman Island (2021)
Where Ingmar Bergman saw severe austerity in the landscapes of Fårö, Mia Hansen-Løve discovers optimism and fantasy, and in weaving those tones deep into her layers of storytelling around a filmmaking couple coming to the island in search of inspiration, Bergman Island becomes an affecting examination of originality and influence in art.
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Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
Preston Sturges’ confrontation of early Hollywood “message” movies in Sullivan’s Travels is a complex balancing act of conflicting tones, playing in the realms of slapstick, irony, and meta-humour to craft a screwball comedy unlike any that has come before.
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Far From Heaven (2002)
It is an unassumingly bold move from Todd Haynes to dig deep into the antiquated conventions of classic Sirkian melodramas in Far From Heaven, as through gentle long dissolves and saturated autumnal colour palettes he delicately expresses the emotional sensitivity of his middle-class characters quietly rubbing up against the racial prejudices, homophobia, and class structures…
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The Hand of God (2021)
Paolo Sorrentino weaves a light Christian mysticism into his autobiographical coming-of-age piece, The Hand of God, threading a theological sense of destiny and exquisite visual artistry through its narrative parallels of Italian folklore, sporting legends, and cinema culture.
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Scarface (1932)
Within the Prohibition era of Scarface where Tony Camonte reigns supreme, violence is conducted with secrecy and treachery, intermittently rupturing Howard Hawk’s patient, brooding narrative with bursts of brutality.
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The Batman (2022)
It is in the dingy, yellow lighting and deliberately hazy camera focus of The Batman that Matt Reeves crafts an entirely new vision of Gotham City and its morally ambiguous vigilante, thoughtfully examining notions of vengeance as a corrupting force within the tight grip of its magnificently thrilling narrative.
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A Woman is a Woman (1961)
There is a biting dissonance at play in A Woman is a Woman, giving the impression that its characters are always on the verge of breaking out into song without ever reaching that climactic emotional outpouring, thereby turning Jean-Luc Godard’s postmodern movie-musical pastiche into a playfully formal experiment of non-sequiturs and fourth wall breaks.
