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Andrei Rublev (1966)
Filmmaker(s): Andrei Tarkovsky

An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.

Knowledge as an Impediment follow several threads of fine films. Most of these concern intelligent notions of structure, of architecture. Welles, Greenaway, Eisenstein, Kurosawa. These mend sense and intellect enhancing both. But there is another thread, one that eschews selfaware structure -- where idea is anathema....


Published December 11, 2024
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Beauty #2 (1965)
Filmmaker(s): Andy Warhol

The movie has a fixed point of view showing a bed with two characters on it, Sedgwick and Piserchio. Chuck Wein is heard speaking but is just out of view. Sedgwick is wearing a lace bra and panties, and Piserchio, wearing only jockey shorts, engage in flirting and light kissing. Wein asks Sedgwick questions seemingly designed to harass and annoy her. Piserchio is more or less a bystander not interacting with Wein. The dialogue seems created adlib and no conclusions are reached in the film. The only conceivable climax is when Sedgwick finally becomes so mad, she throws a glass ashtray at Wein, breaking it.

Seduction of what Warhol does for me is of the “oh, I get it” variety of art, where a statement is supposed to trigger an insight and the insight is the art. Its an indirection of agency, and wears out its effect quickly. But sometimes...


Published May 16, 2023
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Alphaville (1965)
Suddenly the word is Alphaville... and a secret agent is in a breathless race against the Masters of the Future.
Filmmaker(s): Jean-Luc Godard

An American private-eye arrives in Alphaville, a futuristic city on another planet which is ruled by an evil scientist named Von Braun, who has outlawed love and self-expression.

Reduced gives us great advantages. One of these is that we can see art in terms other than the artist used in creating it. The French New Wave was an interesting and timely set of cinematic ideas that were burdened at the time by clumsy...


Published March 12, 2023
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Gumnaam (1965)
And then there were none...
Filmmaker(s): Raja Nawathe

Eight people are trapped on an island when their plane abandons them. They find a large mansion whose butler is expecting them. Then one by one, they die...

Indians is a famously popular film in India. The composition is simple: a story that gives the film an existence, and a series of Bollywood musical numbers. I cannot recall ever experiencing such dissonance, because I am coming at the from a background in Christie....


Published October 9, 2022
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The Sinister Monk (1965)
Filmmaker(s): Harald Reinl

A hooded serial killer finds a novel way to murder his victims--he lashes them to death with a whip. The police try to track him down before any more murders occur.

4 Conspiracies the heyday of mystery writing, we had Sayers, Christie, Chesterton and a dozen others who were artists of narrative curves. The game was to create a world, but us in it and only later let us know how wrong we were. And then we...


Published May 13, 2022
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The Saragossa Manuscript (1965)
Filmmaker(s): Wojciech Jerzy Has

During the Napoleonic wars, a Spanish officer and an opposing officer find a book written by the former's grandfather.

Geometric Cosmology now, you already know that this is a collection of stories and what makes it novel is the relationship among those stories. Many stories have stories within them. Many stories are mirrored. Characters and sets in one story appear in another, sometimes in...


Published December 9, 2024
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Murder Ahoy (1964)
New mischief amidst the mizzen-masts!
Filmmaker(s): George Pollock

During an annual board of trustees meeting, one of the trustees dies. Miss Marple thinks he’s been poisoned after finding a chemical on him. She sets off to investigate at the ship where he had just come from. The fourth and final film from the Miss Marple series starring Margaret Rutherford as the quirky amateur detective.

Jerry Lewis’ Mutiny good: well it has a jaunty theme song. At least it honors the original form in that the order we see things in is roughly the order of discovery by the detective. By this entry in the series, they had seriously lost their...


Published February 22, 2023
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Goldfinger (1964)
Everything he touches turns into excitement!
Filmmaker(s): Guy Hamilton

Special agent 007 comes face to face with one of the most notorious villains of all time, and now he must outwit and outgun the powerful tycoon to prevent him from cashing in on a devious scheme to raid Fort Knox -- and obliterate the world's economy.

Two Zeros is the best of the Bonds, in part because the action/gizmo genre was so young. In those days — hard to believe — this was smart humour, was sexy and thrilled. Now it is merely of historical interest only. Worse, there are franchises that...


Published February 10, 2023
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Seven-Up! (1964)
Filmmaker(s): Paul Almond

A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.

Preparatory did not start as a folded adventure. It is a quite ordinary TV documentary. But it became so in later installments by Apted, where the interviews are largely about how the films affected their lives....


Published December 8, 2022
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A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
In his own way he is, perhaps, the most dangerous man who ever lived!
Filmmaker(s): Sergio Leone

The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.

Joe Meets Akira is an ineptly made film, but which lives because of its sheer importance. It is the reconstruction of the western, the birth of the hardboiled, loveable thug and the reinvention of Kurosawa for the masses. Kurosawa had already been appropriated by the Hollywood...


Published November 20, 2022
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