I couldn't stop thinking about Éric Rohmer's great Triple Agent while watching Killers of the Flower Moon. Both films are largely composed of tranquil conversations taking place while secret acts are being planned, and though the level of information given to the viewer varies drastically between the two films (naturally, Scorsese's is the far less challenging film), they are both concerned with the way that grand or nefarious plans can be carried out in broad daylight without the knowledge of…
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The Crimson Curtain 1953
The Crimson Curtain has elegant voiceover that renders it novelistic, even as the object-based cinematography and staccato editing create an emotional atmosphere that only cinema's amalgamation of shots could achieve. In some ways, the film's look and feel predict Straub & Huillet's debut short film a decade later, while the seductive romance and tangible horror are a far cry from that duo's oeuvre and instead feel like a much smarter, much more pointed version of a Hollywood B-movie. The Crimson Curtain came at me like a revelation; it is a beguiling work really unlike anything else I have seen.
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Underworld 1927
Underworld's gangster melodrama depicts a love triangle against the backdrop of the seedy world of organized crime. The film's chiaroscuro is gorgeous, casting the shadow of fate over the characters. Josef von Sternberg's general pessimism means that each person in Underworld is mostly a victim of destiny, which occasionally results in a bit of a passive atmosphere as the love triangle seemingly develops without much thought or action from the participants, creating the sense that life in the underworld is…
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Broadway Danny Rose 1984
Gordon Willis's cinematography in Broadway Danny Rose isn't as impactful as his work on Annie Hall or Manhattan, but it is far more impactful than his work on most of Woody Allen's other movies that he shot from the era. The tender black-and-white imagery lends a silly mob narrative some degree of pathos, which helps elevate the film a bit. The jokes mostly work, and the humor is more than just Woody Allen playing a bit. Sandy Wexler seems to…
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Licorice Pizza 2021
A series of cathartic moments taken from other, more introspective movies without any of the underlying groundwork that would give those moments any heft, Licorice Pizza is the first time that Paul Thomas Anderson's cinema has seemed overtly crowd-pleasing. Take its opening scene as Exhibit A: a forced meet-cute with no chemistry and little more than knowledge of teen movies to guide the drama forward, the two protagonists' first encounter seems solely interested in getting its narrative on the road…
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Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022
The register of Everything Everywhere All at Once is extremely millennial in its dedication to a juvenile, cringeworthy silliness that seems just slightly outdated. The film's frequent fetishistic references to bagels, for example, smack of the "epic bacon" era of the Internet, and a good deal of gags revolve around sexual kinks (spanking, butt plugs) that show the film really goes for surface-level shock first and foremost. Clearly there is still an audience for this humor—I do not understand the…
