In the first installment of what director Luis Buñuel would later call a trilogy about “the search for truth,” The Milky Way is a deconstruction of the Catholic Church via Her heresies. Two French beggars attempt to panhandle along The Way of St. James (nicknamed Read More …
As young filmmaker Anna leaves Germany, where she has just shown her latest work, she embarks on a series of train rides, and several extended conversations with friends and strangers, as she makes her return to Paris. Director Akerman, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Read More …
In The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky adapted Ascent of Mount Carmel (St. John of the Cross) and Mount Analogue (Rene Daumal) to film by combining them with attributes of various religions in a whirlwind eclecticism of the esoteric. An alchemist takes under his tutelage the Read More …
The title character of Fitzcarraldo is an opera fan with a dream bringing an opera house to the Peruvian jungle, but first, he has to transport a three-story, 300-ton steamer ship over a mountain. Director Werner Herzog filmed this story without computerized special effects, and Read More …
The opening shot of Aguirre: The Wrath of God tracks the descent of a group of conquistadors into an Amazon river valley as they search for El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. That shot becomes a metaphor for Aguirre’s descent into madness as he Read More …
A “minor character” steps off a movie screen and into Depression-era New Jersey, stranding his fellow characters while offering perfect (but imaginary) love to an abused housewife. Woody Allen’s best film (even he regards it as the most successful of his efforts) is a delightfully Read More …
There are two things that can be unarguably claimed about the films of Wes Anderson. First, he is preoccupied with the idea of family—both that which one is born into and that which one chooses. And second, he has an unmistakable visual style. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Read More …
Eminently quotable, Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride—with a screenplay by William Goldman based off his own book—combines slapstick humor with situational comedy and satire in a way few other films have ever achieved. No other filmic attempt at deconstructing the fairy tale has so successfully struck Read More …
Perhaps the great dystopian satire of the cinema, Brazil reveals the foolishness and absurdity of its Brave New World with a dark wit and a robust humor. Jonathan Pryce plays the hapless Sam Lowry as a comic variation on Kafka’s Josef K. As in The Trial (the 1962 Orson Welles adaptation Read More …
Neither the comedian nor his audience knew the full extent of Nazi atrocities; if they had, The Great Dictator either wouldn’t have been made or wouldn’t have succeeded. Still, its takedown of Hitler (not to mention Mussolini, Goebbels, and Goering) is relentless and blistering, even if it’s Read More …