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How Art Made the World (2005-)
Filmmaker(s): Donald F. Glut

Nigel Spivey reveals how the images which surround us today come from the ancient world. It's an epic journey spanning five continents and a hundred thousand years of history.

The Skull in the Livingroom Here is a strange idea for a documentary. Make a movie about why movies work, why we cling to them and how they invent our humanity. Tell a story about storytelling. It is put together by a man who himself is a good...


Published November 29, 2022
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The Hideous Sun Demon (1958)
The Blaze Of The Sun Made Him A Monster!

After exposure to radiation, an atomic research scientist finds himself changing into a murderous, lizard-like creature every time he is exposed to sunlight.

Rays Some of these old things are great. The absolute maturity of the genre creates a purity that you can see because all the normal movie stuff (plot, acting, story, production) falls away and you deal with the saints and angels of the cinematic universe. But that’s...


Published November 29, 2022
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Flirting (1991)
Here's to risks.
Filmmaker(s): John Duigan

Two freethinking teenagers - a boy and a girl - confront with authoritarian teachers in their boarding schools. The other students treat this differently.

A Caning for Love Heavens be thanked for how Australians and New Zealanders have revived the acting element of film. Everything in the country seems set up to produce performing artists, even talent writers that understand acting, where Brazil produces soccer players and the US lawyers. Here...


Published November 29, 2022
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Henry Fool (1997)
An honest man is always in trouble...
Filmmaker(s): Hal Hartley

An egocentric bum transforms the lives of a shy New Jersey garbageman and his sister.

We See The Poem Hartley is a major talent, a unique, competent voice in a bramble of sameness. The last project I saw was “No Such Thing,” which is one of those that if you don’t actively avoid it, it hits you deep in your soul...


Published November 28, 2022
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I Cover the War! (1937)
DRAMA FOR HIS NEWSREEL CAMERA!
Filmmaker(s): Arthur Lubin

Bob Adams, ace newsreel cameraman, is told by his boss, "Get the picture---we can't screen alibis." He heads for Samari, a desert hot-bed of tribal unrest in Africa, to do just that, which includes getting footage of El Kadar, bandit and rebel leader. He gets his pictures but only after a romance with the Colonel's daughter Pamela, saving his wimpy, hacked-off brother Don from being a dupe of the gun-runners, and run-ins with spies and throat-cutting tribesman. For a finale, he saves the British Army.

Picture Snatcher Before ‘Stagecoach’ turned John Wayne into a celebrated wooden actor, he was a an ordinary uncelebrated one in a series of odd projects. Probably the most interesting of these odd deals is this movie. It doesn’t seem to be rentable. In terms of the actual...


Published November 28, 2022
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Hereafter (2010)
Touched by death. Changed by life.
Filmmaker(s): Clint Eastwood

Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.

Chabrolet At a certain point in some filmmakers’ careers, the films cease being discrete works of art and start becoming chapters in an engaging life. Eastwood is not the most weighty artist out there. He has made a couple worthwhile films and much chaff but has...


Published November 28, 2022
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Dark Secrets Revealed
Filmmaker(s): David Yates

As Lord Voldemort tightens his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds, Hogwarts is no longer a safe haven. Harry suspects perils may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle fast approaching. Together they work to find the key to unlock Voldemorts defenses and to this end, Dumbledore recruits his old friend and colleague Horace Slughorn, whom he believes holds crucial information. Even as the decisive showdown looms, romance blossoms for Harry, Ron, Hermione and their classmates. Love is in the air, but danger lies ahead and Hogwarts may never be the same again.

Space Opera Over on FilmsFolding there is a discussion on architecture in film and luckily enough this comes along as a great example of space used intensively and to support the definition of world and some narrative elements. It isn’t art. It breaks no new...


Published November 28, 2022
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Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Not all angels are innocent.
Filmmaker(s): Peter Jackson

Wealthy and precocious teenager Juliet transfers from England to New Zealand with her family, and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. When their parents begin to suspect that their increasingly intense and obsessive bond is becoming unhealthy, the girls hatch a dark plan for those who threaten to keep them apart.

The Fourth World of the Third Man Perhaps the premier concern of modern filmmakers is locating somewhere in the film exactly where the filmmaking process is. This is often incorrectly called irony, self-reference or the odd construction of reflexivity. I call it “folding” and it seems...


Published November 28, 2022
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Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
Filmmaker(s): Robert Bresson

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

Burdens Sometimes the celebration a film has garnered becomes a burden. This is perhaps the most burdened of all the films I know. The Criterion DVD has a French TeeVee program made when the film was released. It features French intellectual celebrities (which is what France...


Published November 28, 2022
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The Forgotten (2004)
You'll Never Forget The Ones You Love
Filmmaker(s): Joseph Ruben

Telly Paretta is a grieving mother struggling to cope with the loss of her 8-year-old son. She is stunned when her psychiatrist reveals that she has created eight years of memories about a son she never had. But when she meets a man who has had a similar experience, Telly embarks on a search to prove her son's existence, and her sanity.

Two Faces Readers of my other comments on Julianne Moore know that I credit her with being one of the few actresses that can do “folded” acting. That’s where the actor presents us with two characters, one usually _in_ the story and another that engages in...


Published November 28, 2022
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