All That Heaven Allows (1955) A Film by Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk's lean, straightforward melodrama All That Heaven Allows is built around the tensions between the public and personal self...

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) A Film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

So far, 2011 for me has been very much the year of cinematic metempsychosis, which is certainly to say it's been a unique and eye-openin...

Pulp Fiction and the Threat of Persuasion

( DISCLAIMER: This is my final paper for a course I took this past semester called Narrative Ethics. The class necessarily mandates a moral ...

Certified Copy (2010) A Film by Abbas Kiarostami

Why is it that when a bride quite noticeably puts an eye-drop in her eye in the background of a frame and then cries in the foreground only ...

Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times) A Film by Michelangelo Frammartino (2010)

It's quite a magical transfiguration how the smoke that fills the frame in the opening shot of Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro...

Summer Hours (2008) A Film by Olivier Assayas

Early on in Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours , a group of young kids, the grandchildren of an old and widowed art collector named Hélène (E...

Screening Notes #4

The best few weeks of filmgoing I’ve had in a while are also, due to a generally busy schedule and lack of time, the worst weeks for product...