Given that they were only made couple of years apart and that both have the word “summer” in the title and that both are coming of age films of a sort, I can’t help but view Summer With Monika as a companion piece to Summer Interlude. The summer in “summer interlude” is meant as a sort of stand in for the youth of its protagonist. A similar thing happens in Summer With Monika, but the key difference is that it’s…

For the longest time there had only been one best picture nominee from the year 1930 that I’d seen, the winner, All Quite on the Western Front. But in the last year or so the fine people at Turner Classic Movies have helped change that. Earlier in the year I caught Disraeli and The Love Parade, and a couple of nights ago some genius at that wonderful channel programmed the last two unseen films from that year (a pair of…

This is a movie that has become something of a punchline, the movie of choice to bring up when bringing up a film that is not visually stunning (My Dinner With Andre: The Videogame, My Dinner With Andre 3D, My Dinner With Andre 2 Electric Boogaloo, etc.). In spite of its stuffy reputation, I enjoyed the movie a lot. The two characters talk about a lot of really interesting philosophical ideas and when they start to disagree it can become…

I’ll say upfront that Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is not for everyone, and even if it is “for you,” your enjoyment of the film may be highly dependent on the mood you’re in the day you watch it. This is a deliberately paced and contemplative art film which builds an almost hypnotizing mood through its use of location, the length of its shots, and its eye for human interaction. It could easily be dismissed as…