Category: Threes

The Broken Hill This is a simple project, executed flawlessly. As with most films that bring you into human emotions, this uses an external reference. The gulf between two souls is referenced by cultural differences. The opening of the inner emotional fountain is folded into profound Australian landscapes, opened for mining. Our woman is a… Continue reading Japanese Story (2003)

Abstract Porn Hartley is one of the most interesting directors working. Many associate him with French auteurs, but I think his experiments are more intellectual, more New York. His films are not only about other films, but exist in a world abstracted from them where almost everyone else insists on wallowing in the same space… Continue reading Amateur (1994)

Diversions Warning, if you watch this on DVD, avoid the commentary at all costs. This is a case where the creators are inarticulate nitwits, but what they have created has a particularly intelligent design. Superficially, this is the simple formula: boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl back. With this edition, the two… Continue reading All the Real Girls (2003)

Lucy in the Sky The critics hated it. The public stayed home. But I liked this. A lot. It is cinematic. Powerful cinema. And I am telling you I liked this with a bit of surprise on my part. That’s because it has two actors who often play this introspective game, where they let you… Continue reading All the King’s Men (2006)

Fabrications I admit, I find the story of the Mankiewcz brothers to be one of the most interesting in all filmdom. Part of the allure is their experimentation in narrative perspectives and the nature of fabrication. Here, the fabrication is extra sweetly dimensional. We have a movie about movies, actresses portraying actresses with resonances among… Continue reading All About Eve (1950)

WETA Gold There are only three ways to turn on your mind. The third is too dangerous to even sketch. The most common is to allow it to do what it wants, tracing known pathways and presenting known patterns. All imagination comes home to rest. But then there is art, which in my book is… Continue reading Adventures of Tintin (2011)

The Chosen I am usually offended, retroactively offended by Ivory – Jhabvala films. They have a quiet, deep consistency that draws respect the same way a cathedral does. But the uncomplicated emotional links and the sentimental world in which they exist gets to me, and taints dreams for days afterward. Good news. Here is that… Continue reading Jane Austin in Manhattan (1980)

Sex, Drugs and Crime William Powell is responsible for a huge element of our loves, the smoothness that has comic irony behind it. He invented it. There are a few of his movies that are essential viewing, but those are after the government thugs decided what movies should be like in “moral” terms. So you… Continue reading Jewel Robbery (1932)

Timothy Leery I was exceedingly happy to be able to find this old gem. In the early 70s, there was brief window when porn was where many cinematic experiments were happening. Some of them actually had some promise for being important. Perhaps the oddest is the porn musical. This is the most interesting from a… Continue reading Danish Pastries (1973)