In this early Varda film, Cleo is hooked on her own reflection. She is constantly looking in mirrors, window reflections, and ensuring her well-manicured presentation is in order. But something dramatic happens in our two late afternoon hours with Cleo, during which she is waiting Read More …
Spike Lee uses three spiritual awakenings to frame the story of Malcolm X’s life. Malcolm was raised in a Christian household but was never a committed follower. His ties to the underworld led to a prison sentence where he experienced his first spiritual awakening. We Read More …
Delbert Mann’s Marty tells the simple story of two lonely, desperate people (played by Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair) meeting one another and waking to the possibility that life can offer more than what society has allotted for them. Marty remains one of only two films to have won Read More …
A beautiful filmic palindrome, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” is a richly humanistic film, even as its premise is about encountering extraterritorial life. The film opens and closes with a memory, albeit our understanding of the memory and its Read More …
Call it a Chestertonian fairy tale. This film explores a “soul sick” man’s growing awareness of the fact that he is no longer interested in his own self, but in other people and other things around him instead. This realization is then lit like a match when he takes Read More …
Mann fills The Insider with mirrors, windows, and all manner of frames within frames. Based on a Vanity Fair article, the first half of the film narrates the plight of Jeffrey Wigand, the first whistleblower to bring the predatory practices of big tobacco to public attention in Read More …
The theme of waking up plays out on multiple levels in the gorgeously animated The Secret of Kells from filmmakers Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey. Young Brendan awakens to the world outside the walls of the Abbey of Kells where he lives with his uncle, the Abbott. Read More …
The Assassin is a difficult film to summarize, but not because the plot is unclear. Characters constantly fill each other in on where exactly they stand. Roughly, the movie concerns an assassin (Shu Qi) who, having failed in an assignment, is sent to kill her cousin, Read More …
Margaret’s salvation comes through a synchronicity of awakenings: The moment her husband’s disordered priorities are exposed, with painful consequences. The moment her friendships are revealed as relationships of convenience, enabling lives of self-centeredness and denial. The moment she participates in workplace corruption. She begins to Read More …
What do you worship? Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog never asks this question explicitly, but it does examine it through its provocative riff on the Western. For cowboy Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), it’s clear what he worships: manhood. He’s fashioned himself as the ultimate masculine Read More …