“It was my first time reading Chandler, and yet it didn’t feel like it: I’d devoured so many of his influences that the writing seemed familiar, even if there was nothing quite like getting it from the original source.”
“What would the world of animation be like if Yoshifumi Kondō had lived to make another film?”
“Atonement may always be widely regarded as Wright’s best work, but Hanna is his bravest and most authentic (and should be remembered as such).”
“Why can’t Leia be into gold bikinis or even that fantasy of submission?”
“Akin to a melody that resonates in your mind in a continual loop of madness and pleasure, Youth is a not-so-easily eradicable experience.”
“As a filmmaker struggling with her own ideas, it’s a little upsetting to see a man (of the same age) come out with a fully formed idea of his own kind of cinema.”
“In comparing the new film with American Hustle and The Fighter, Russell’s frenetic style succeeds in the previous two through a shifting focus that feels at bit more at home in the context of a sprawling ensemble piece.”
“An incredible failure, ‘The Rose Tattoo’ has value in understanding the confines of the production code and the importance of good direction.”
“The problem of Birdman isn’t its maximalism, but the direction in which it’s aimed.”
“While Iñárritu’s tactics can become tiresome over multiple views, he is perhaps one of the greatest, single-experience filmmakers working today.”
“Babel is Crash with delusions of global grandeur; a film that masquerades as a sweeping, humanistic epic, but is instead an ultimately hammy, superficial and miserablist game of connect-the-dots.”
“Amores Perros clocks in at 150 minutes, yet not a single frame feels unnecessary.”
“It’s understandable for viewers to call something ‘overrated’ when they feel let down, however, critics should strike the word from their vocabularies.”
“A tiresome example of early 2000s prestige filmmaking, 21 Grams holds the impressions of grand gestures without any of the substance.”
“A Walk Among the Tombstones beholds one of the most understated and unique performances from action hero-era Liam Neeson.”
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
“Sisters is a house party film told by and from the perspective of women, and that is precisely why it succeeds.”
“Throughout much of his 60s work, Imamura often examined the balance between ordinary and unordinary people, and in The Profound Desire of the Gods, he finds an exceptional way of highlighting the extremity of this concept.”
Here’s Josh Slater-Williams on four underrated gems of the past year.
“For all its frenetic editing, energetic performances and twisty narrative structure, there is sadly an elephant in the room, and that’s the film’s treatment (or mistreatment) of women.”