Ernst Lubitsch has a way of making his films feel light and airy, so breezily sophisticated, and so simply joyful. They always seem to put me in a good mood, and this one is no exception. Miriam Hopkins is a woman torn between two lovers (Frederic March and Gary Cooper), and rather than limit herself, cycles through having both, one or the other, and neither (the latter while she’s with a third, Edward Everett Horton). It’s a great cast and…
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The Toll of the Sea 1922
Seeing baby faced Anna May Wong, just one year out of high school at 17 and in her breakout role, is enough to make this film worth checking out. The film was shot in two-color Technicolor (red and green), which I found added to the images, rather than awkwardly detracting from them as I feared it might. Unfortunately, the plot is typical of the period, a variation of the popular Madame Butterfly story of 1898, and it’s pretty maddening. At…
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Corridor of Mirrors 1948
“Nobody wants to belong to the past. Except me. But perhaps you’ll be there with me sometimes.”
I loved everything about the two leads (Edana Romney and Eric Portman), their looks so perfect for the period, the way they gazed at each other, and their range throughout a haunting story. Romney plays Mifanwy (or as the natives of a foreign country had called her long ago, “Devil Girl”), and Portman plays a cultured man who takes a liking to her…
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Cinema Paradiso 1988
Sentimental to the point of being cloying, but finishes strong, with nostalgia tugging at the heart, and that brilliant final scene with the smooch reel.
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Meek's Cutoff 2010
Absolutely loved this. Director Kelly Reichardt subverts nearly all of the usual aspects of what we’ve come to expect in a Western, and yet creates a film that is gritty, tense, realistic, and gorgeous. It’s an absolute masterpiece. So many of her decisions resonated with me:
- The 4x3 aspect ratio instead of widescreen, mirroring the perspective from a covered wagon or a woman’s bonnet. Along the same lines, the lack of extraordinary scenery (e.g. Ford’s Monument Valley), instead giving…
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The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar 2023
There are a few common themes in Wes Anderson’s works of late, like the nested story structures and narrated storytelling, that aren’t doing as much for me as others, maybe because they seem to be detracting more than they’re adding. The visuals and aesthetic are, as always, impeccable, as is the star power he draws. It’s pretty cool that he faithfully adapted this story from Roald Dahl, though I kind of liked the imagined alternate ending a bit more than the original. Overall, not a bad way to spend 40 minutes.
