Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris begins in space, with scientist Kris Kelvin arriving on the Solaris space station, while Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptation begins on Earth. This highlights a key difference between novel and film: Where Lem explored the possibility of a planet-sized intelligent being conjuring creatures from Read More …
Wong Kar-wai’s career is perhaps best understood as an extended study of romance as a form of history, a study that reaches its apex in the immense and enigmatic 2046. Structured as the elliptical recollections of writer Chow Mo-wan (who previously appeared in Wong’s Days of Read More …
Christopher Nolan’s second feature film is a mind-bending thriller about Leonard’s (Guy Pearce) obsessive quest for vengeance. After a blow to the head leaves him unable to form any new short term memories, Leonard obsesses over the one thing he can remember: someone named Jon Read More …
Long considered one of the masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane also offers a masterclass in the use of the filmic flashback, structuring its entire narrative through memory. The reporter Thompson’s quest to discover the meaning of Kane’s enigmatic final word, “Rosebud,” leads him and the Read More …
Aging U.S. senator Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife (Vera Miles) travel across the country to a frontier town for the funeral of a local rancher (John Wayne), a surprising course of action for a famous politician. Through Ranse’s recollections, John Ford both affirms Read More …
Taking its title from an Alexander Pope poem, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind combines the DIY exuberance of director Michel Gondry and the existential hyperactivity of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in a film that is, technically, about brain damage. Following a painful breakup with his girlfriend Clementine Read More …
Haunted by memories of World War II, specifically the Hiroshima bombings, a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) also dwell upon the memories of their now ended affair. Director Alain Resnais repeatedly cuts to the same scenes, ingrained in both their Read More …
The poet Denise Levertov proposed that the world might know peace if we reorganized priorities in favour of ‘long pauses’. She was calling for a practice of deep imagination. The final movie from master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami feels like a profound example. In it, Kiarostami Read More …
Andrew Bujalski’s affecting Support the Girls is one of the more raw, honest, and insightful cinematic depictions of the American food industry and its underlying ideologies. The story centers on a day in the life of restaurant manager Lisa (Regina Hall) as she tries to manage and Read More …
It would be difficult to overstate the weirdness of this film, but the oddity of the following sentence is some indication of what you’re in for: Adapted from the writings of the French Catholic poet Charles Péguy, Bruno Dumont’s unclassifiable theological rock musical blends theodicy Read More …