current faves = best first watches so far in 2022
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A Matter of Life and Death 1946
To start with the universe, then give you just two people. To make you love them, make them love each other, and make one of them leave life and love behind, in just ten minutes, just one scene.
I love looking at the village from here, it looks so different... You see it all clearly and at once, as in a poet's eye.
A production line of wings. The bleached black and white of heaven. The tinkling piano, beautiful and…
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The Servant 1963
(I wanted to catch this again before it leaves cinemas.)
Thinking this time about the convex mirror (known as both a butler's mirror and witch eye mirror) that Losey shoots so many key moments through. Acts displayed backwards, the fairground distortion of image. It's transformative effect as it shows the relationships between master, servant, their fiancées, and their battle within the stultifying space of the house.
How, through obscure angles, Losey's mirror reveals hidden assignations, lending a voyeuristic thrill –…
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Exotica 1994
If films have a temperature, Exotica's is warm and muggy and fecund, Egoyan seeding a hothouse heat-lamp of a setting where mood acts an incubator for voyeurship, ritual and artifice, a hypnotic retreat into memory and fantasy.
We've always had this understanding. I mean, I need him for certain things and he needs me for certain things, and that's the way it's been.
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Modesty Blaise 1966
RIP Monica Vitti – I had to fire up Modesty Blaise for a tribute.
Some tidbits below that I enjoyed from the commentary featurette based on interviews with the cast and crew:
- Vitti and Bogarde were very close before they started shooting, having 'wonderful lunches' together. But as things started to sour onset, he would do impressions of her to Tony Forwood ("Monica Vee-tee is kind of petty, petty, pet-tee") news of which got back to her and he…
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Elvis 2022
Neon carnivalesque maximalism, Austin Butler performing Elvis's movements and mannerisms with the uncanniness of a bad waxwork. Highly-rendered videogame cinematography. Bloated smellovision recreations, Viva Los Vegas mashed up with Britney's Toxic, anaemic indie-warble covers of some of Elvis's most rousing belters. Spinning spinning colour, in-movie graphic design that's half powerpoint smartart and half tumblr gifset. Slot-machine triptych shot framing. A decadently silly on-the-(prosthetic)-nose performance from Tom Hanks. A real fun time at the movies.
