One of the primary philosophies of the long take is that a cut can effectively obfuscate the passage of time, and in doing so, lessen the truth of an image. Noé expands upon that by making each cut feel compounded and deliberate, as if the obfuscation of this truth is intentional, in order to embed memory within photography.
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Some Like It Hot 1959
people are gonna think I named myself after jack lemmons character aren’t they
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Goodbye, Dragon Inn 2003
Unsurprisingly a very intimate and metatextual experience to see this in a theater. I am struck by how, even in the theater’s vast empty space, its inhabitants always seem to stay near to each other, as if the pursuit for some human connection in a silent and isolating space overrides is the primary reason why we go to the cinema. And that scene with Shih Chun and Miao Chien! So human and poetic.
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Sleepaway Camp 1983
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
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After Yang 2021
What a staggering misfire. Columbus remains one of the most delicate and sensitive masterpieces of the 21st century; not just for its tactile adoption of aesthetic sensibilities laid forth by Kogonada's inspirations before him, but also for its innately humanist filmmaking methodologies and fastidious attention to silence and space. This is anything but--a cloistered, cluttered mess of half-baked ideas and phoned-in filmmaking stitched together with the worn-out thread and fabric of greater giants. The exacting, purposeful composition of Columbus is…
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The Batman 2022
Visions of an apocalypse, mythology carved in light and shadow. Already one of the films of this era.
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Unsane 2018
Both formally ambitious and audacious; the camera as spectator and participant, predator and arbiter; people as victims of systems and each other. This is bonafide top-notch Soderbergh, his perspectives on systemic operations as economies of bodies designed around the commodification of humans for profit and for the progress of the few illuminated fully. Here, the iPhone serves as its own critic, capturing and scrutinizing its capabilities to observe, to parameterize, to reveal. The lynchpin of the films narrative relies on the subtle reveal of the camera as an independent entity and not simply as an agent of perspective. Brilliant.