Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
One of my most enduring memories of being a child in elementary school centers around the upright piano in the grade 5/6 classroom. In a sort of benign haunting, it would possess our homeroom teacher (also the principal of the school) whenever he sat down before it. A large, affable man, the touch of those […]
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)
“I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” —Miles Davis Fans of modem jazz owe the subject of this month’s review a huge debt. There aren’t a whole lot of fine film biographies of jazz musicians available on the market, but Charlotte Zwerin’s Theolonious Monk: Straight No Chaser (1988) must certainly be […]
Koyaanisquatsi (1982)
I’ve said it before. Who needs special effects when you’ve got the real world? Nothing is more spectacular than the natural world we’re born into, or more spectacularly deranged than the artificial one modem technology births round us. The special effects wizards at California’s Industrial Light & Magic company might do a wonderful job on […]
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udVcEcGYw-Q Also worth checking out is Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922). There’s a high quality copy on YouTube, but with German intertitle cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuJRs9xvkPg (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UBj6Z_CJJI (Part 2) An abridged version of Part 1, with English intertitles, is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MulihI2Mx80 Quick! Name the great detective/villain combos. Sherlock Holmes & the nefarious Moriarty. […]
Andrei Rublev (1966)
“…if we accept objective existence of the reflection— reflecting as it is given, we are obliged to conceive a mode of being different from that of the in-itself, not a unity which contains a duality, not a synthesis which surpasses and lifts the abstract moments of the thesis and of the antithesis, but a duality […]
The Misfits (1961)
Guido: You care—whatever happens to anybody happens to you. You’re really hooked into the whole thing. It’s a blessing. Rosalind: People say I’m just nervous…. Guido: If it weren’t for the nervous people, we’d still be eating each other. Gabe: What’s eating you? Guido: Just my life. At a point midway through John Huston’s The […]
Mephisto (1981)
Hey, it’s an actor’s life. Art may be immortal, but the bills still have to be paid. One minute you’re playing Hamlet, the next you’re doing voice-overs for MacDonald’s. Ask Klaus Maria Brandauer. In 1981 this Austrian-bom actor gave the performance of a lifetime in István Szabó’s film Mephisto: in 1983 he was the “evil […]
Leaving Normal (1992)
I didn’t understand Thelma & Louise. Or rather, I didn’t understand why Thelma & Louise had the impact it did. It’s not that I don’t admire Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon. I do, wholeheartedly. It’s not that Ridley Scott is a director incapable of bringing a unique vision to the screen. Neither Alien nor Blade […]
Come See the Paradise (1990)
Alan Parker, I know you’re not out there reading this, but I apologize anyway. When I decided to check out Come See the Paradise—your recent film centred around the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II–I did so thinking that the director of films such as s Mississippi Burning and The Commitments would probably […]
An Angel at My Table (1990)
“Do you know the secret of my success with tigers?” – Janet Frame If you weren’t sure that there really was such a thing as karma, this month’s Seldom Scene might help. Yes, it could be a mere coincidence that last month’s film was called The Devil’s Eye, and this month’s is An Angel […]