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Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock engulfs you in a whirlpool of terror and tension!
Filmmaker(s): Alfred Hitchcock

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

Two Dizzy really has to separate the idea of this film from its execution. I think the idea is terrific and the execution wobbly at least by today's standards. First, the story, which is clever and self-referentially about the making of itself. Initially, we are shown the...


Published December 11, 2024
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Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969)
Filmmaker(s): Federico Fellini

Fellini discusses his views of making motion pictures and his unorthodox procedures. He seeks inspiration in various out of the way places. During this film viewers go with him to the Colisseum at night, on a subway ride past Roman ruins, to the Appian Way, to a slaughterhouse, and on a visit to Marcello Mastroianni's house. Fellini also is seen in his own office interviewing a series of unusual characters seeking work or his help.

9 1/2 Including Seven Civilisations for myself, this is the most rewarding Fellini experience I have had. That's because in his early work, where one takes risks, he was very less ambitious narrative-wise than his later work. But then when he got to the later...


Published December 11, 2024
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City Lights (1931)
True Blind Love
Filmmaker(s): Charlie Chaplin

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

Seeing and Being Seen me, this film falls not into the category of favourite films (I'm a Marx brothers kind of guy) but earns instead a place on a very short list of most important movies. That's because it has two features that I truly appreciate. It...


Published December 11, 2024
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A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven.
Filmmaker(s): Stanley Kubrick

In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?

The Eye and the Genital films are misunderstood. Reading the professional reviews and comments here, one would think the reason for this film to exist is for Kubrick to make a strong satire. What bunk. What a small view. This movie is about the tyranny of...


Published December 11, 2024
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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The ultimate trip.
Filmmaker(s): Stanley Kubrick

Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.

Dueling Gods the disaster of ‘Sparticus.' Kubrick has centred each project on the mysteries of the narrative. Each film explores some theory or notion about the paths of storytelling and the fragility of those paths. Some get very abstract, like’Barry Lyndon,' where identities are adopted...


Published December 11, 2024
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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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Rashomon (1950)
The husband, the wife… or the bandit?
Filmmaker(s): Akira Kurosawa

Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

Nested, Folded, Parallel Narrative about truth, this is more fundamentally about the nature of nested and floating narrative. Kurosawa is one of three men who invented film, and this is his most influential one. Much is made of the construction of the story, which you can...


Published December 10, 2024
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8½ (1963)
A picture that goes beyond what men think about - because no man ever thought about it in quite this way!
Filmmaker(s): Federico Fellini

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

The Petaled Swirl of Influences am generally not a fan of Fellini: his early work is too sentimentally trivial for his talent, and his later work is just lazy. But in this film, he reaches more than one height. In terms of basic worlds, it is...


Published December 9, 2024
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Annie Hall (1977)
A nervous romance.
Filmmaker(s): Woody Allen

New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditsy Annie Hall.

The Story about the Story is an intelligent man who worries about the issues of film-making. The primary concern, the very first problem, is always to decide what the relationships are among the audience, the camera, the narrator if any, and the characters. Woody was on...


Published December 9, 2024
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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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