Karolyn and I enjoyed seeing our good friend Michael Glover Smith's new film, Relative, on the big screen. Karolyn even proclaimed it his “best film yet,” and I think it would be tough to disagree. It looks great, it's a clear expression of his aesthetic.
Mike is interested in the relations of lovers and, here, in the relations of parents and their sons and daughters. Is the problem too much thinking, or too much feeling, or too little? The mother…
Like most of the greats (Bergman, Fellini), Antonioni made beautiful films before the period we must readily associate with him (I would say from L’Avventura in 1960 to The Passenger in 1975), and probably after, too. Here’s one. It’s about an actress whose ambition outstrips her talent, and whose choices, often based on illusions, inexorably leave her trapped. Quite moving. This is cinema.
I am bursting with love for this film. It's everything I love; everything life and cinema should be: Paris, the left, music, love, creativity. This is a formally inventive look back on Agnes Varda's great, long life and career (and she is still going strong). My love for it overflows, gushes into this box, this container to fill with words. I felt tears of joy sting my face when, towards the end, I beheld the "house of cinema."
This documentary puts us in the shoes of the human beings behind "made in China." It's a universal story, the generation gap, this one set against a backdrop of the world's largest human migration: 130 million migrant workers, who have moved from the countryside to seek work in the city in factories, go home once a year for Chinese New Year. Most of us in the west will never get as deep into China as this film takes us, even…
