Boredom leads to this.

Director Retrospective: A Child is Waiting (Cassavetes, 1963) - It's all uphill from here.

Two women meet for the first time in a Mental Hospital focused on the well-being of developmentally disabled children. Jean Hansen (Judy Garland), recently employed under the staff of Dr. Clark (Burt Lancaster), has resisted her boss’ rigid teaching for a more nurturing, empathetic philosophy with Reuben (Bruce Ritchey), a boy that was hurryingly left at the facility by parents that couldn’t…

A Summer’s Tale (Rohmer, 1996)

We probably cannot relate to the preciseness of Eric Rohmer’s luminous, breezy stories of carefree people existing in settings that mirror their finely-sculpted beauty, but the emotional orbit within is one we intrinsically gravitate towards, hoping to find truth from its frankness with feeling, whether we’ve lived their lives or not. His cinema allows the familiarity of a concept to breathe…

45th Telluride Film Festival – Cold War, Wernor Herzog, and a lot of Coffee

A weekend I never imagined living, my time at the 45th Telluride Film Festival is now the window that is prominently clouded with rose-tinted glasses. Having never attended a film festival of this caliber, the concept of indulging in a slew of quality films over the course of four days while frequenting a crowd of cinephiles with likeminded interests was an endeavor I had trouble maintaining any…

Top Film of August 2018 – Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, 1953)

Jacques Tati’s 1949 debut feature Jour De Fête used the idyllic small-town vibe of France and disheveled it with a travelling circus that yielded cumbersome results from those accustomed to a model of modest life. The townsfolk are established from their various trades and residences, introduced from both a respective idiosyncratic quirk and a reaction to this intrusive manufactured design. The…

Top Discovery of July 2018 – Mission Impossible: Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018)

In his second outing with the IMF, Christopher McQuarrie does everything needed in order for Mission Impossible: Fallout, the sixth entry in this twenty-plus year cinematic franchise, to maintain its high wire act from beginning to end. Its plot, which has been needlessly convoluted in prior installments to a point of annoyance, is concocted at the basest level in order to deliver a succession…

Top Discovery of June 2018 – Fury (Lang, 1936)

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” proclaimed Network’s (1976) Howard Beale (Peter Rinch), a quote that inextricably struck the chord with both the fictional crowd of Beale’s world and the post-Vietnam Gerald Ford audiences that flocked to this sensationalist-driven picture. It’s the articulative snippet from Paddy Chayefsky’s piercing script that has remained in the…

Top Discovery of May 2018 – Seven Days in May (Frankenheimer, 1964)

The opening sequence for John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in Maydemonstrates the miscalculation of political dynamic that drives the film’s tyrannical bent. The credits themselves, scrolling over the constitution as the forceful, patriotic beat of Jerry Goldsmith’s score takes hold, is overwhelmingly precise with its patriotism, articulating this bind on the people that will subsequently be…

YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, the best film I saw this past month. Few contemporary filmmakers make you feel violence like Lynne Ramsay. #52FilmsByWomen

The knee-jerk reaction for Lynne Ramsay’s latest feature, You Were Never Really Here, is to grab onto its ‘70s American bones and single out Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driveras its obvious antecedent. Its commonality of story, a lone man, plagued by PTSD, stumbles towards a personal trajectory that’s both reprehensible and intelligible with its actions, is clearly justified through its surface. But…

Top Discovery of March 2018 – The End of Summer (Ozu, 1961)

Sometimes relegated for being too content with the familiar, Yasujiro Ozu’s cinema is one of serene understanding, where the dynamic of family, time, and death is explored through minutely varying narratives and a realized aesthetic that seemingly limits artistic liberation. This presumption that one viewing is enough to understand the body of work as a whole is beside the point. The trajectories…

Top Discovery of February 2018 – The Naked City (Dassin, 1948)

There’s are present assumptions when one approaches a noir. The repetition of the familiar, which can be greeted with a grown elsewhere, is treated with excitement for the possibility of its alteration under the artist at play. If, for instance, we watch a noir through the viewpoint of Fritz Lang, we expect the downward spiral will be furthered to a point that resembles the director’s grim…

Top Films of 2017

The highs of 2017 weren’t consistent, but they were surely felt when they landed. It was a sparse year, with dry spells that felt long enough to make one think it was a bust. Perhaps I should stop going into each year expecting another 2011. Fortunately, we had Twin Peaks: The Return during this year’s longest rut. No, I cannot justify its inclusion. If I did play by those loose rules, it would…

Top Discovery of January 2018 – The Green Ray (Rohmer, 1986)

None of them seem to be aware. Her social gatherings for wine and the spoken word amount to ceaseless bickering and uncontrollable tears. The happenstance encounter with a seemingly charming man pleases the best friend, but makes her antsy to the demonstrative point where she’d rather be alone in her hotel. The demeanor is realized to every observer, no matter how inattentive, that this woman is…