When writing about Bela Tarr's cinema, starting with the opening shots of his films is nearly unavoidable. He places so much emphasis on...
The Ice Storm (1997) A Film by Ang Lee
Fate is the engine that drives The Ice Storm and its cast of characters - the members of two Connecticut upper middle-class suburban famili...
Sleeper (1973) A Film by Woody Allen
Sleeper may very well have been the first time Woody Allen was able to pull it all together: a story with coherence and flow (the terrain o...
Ulysses' Gaze (To vlemma tou Odyssea) A Film by Theodoros Angelopoulos (1995)
Becoming enraptured by the elegiac beauty that permeates Theodoros Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze is not a difficult task. Unraveling ...
My Best Friend (Mon meilleur ami) A Film by Patrice Leconte (2006)
My Best Friend is the kind of film that is bound to elicit unabashed waves of light compliments, most specifically describing it as "c...
Black Sunday: The Mask of Satan (La maschera del demonio) A Film by Mario Bava (1960)
The iconic symbols of Italian Gothic horror films have somewhat made their way, not always knowingly, into the film world's collective c...
Wendy and Lucy (2008) A Film by Kelly Reichardt
Often times there are stories that may crop up invariably for years, played out with minor differences in the films they inhabit. This works...
Silent Light (Stellet Licht) A Film by Carlos Reygades (2008)
Silent Light starts and ends with a sunrise and sunset, a monumentally simple concept that surprisingly has never once, to my knowledge, be...
Badlands (1973) A Film by Terrence Malick
Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is one of the most enigmatic Western rebels in the history of American cinema. The same can be said about his ...
La Lettre (1998) A Short Film by Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry is an artist who has created some of his finest work in short form or in collaboration with other directors. Like his segment ...
After Hours (1985) A Film by Martin Scorsese
After Hours is one of Martin Scorsese's most unnerving studies of urban paranoia, but unfortunately is a film that is frequently forgot...
Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) A Film by Tomas Alfredson (2008)
Vampire films of merit come few and far between, which is why Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In - a work that fuses horror and soc...