aka Noam Tchotchke
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The Deceivers 1988
1988’s The Deceivers, playing in theaters now in a new restoration, is produced by Ismail Merchant but it’s not quite what you imagine when you think of a Merchant/Ivory production. For one thing, it’s not directed by James Ivory. Instead, it’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan‘s Nicholas Meyer at the helm (though cinematographer Walter Lassally does provide the same soft, grimy beauty that he brought to Ivory’s The Bostonians and Heat and Dust in the years prior). Sure,…
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Isabella 2020
In the opening shot of Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella, the camera tilts down from a purple sky to locate a long, metal jetty projecting over a still body of water from some unseen piece of land, accompanied by the dull, pleasant din large bodies of water make even when they’re calm. We’ll return to the image of the jetty but, in a way, that sonance never leaves the film. It might not always be water itself but–from soft voices to wind…
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A Hidden Life 2019
Terrence Malick’s transcendent A Hidden Life is informed and bolstered in every way by Christian philosophy and yet, despite including numerous men of cloth as characters, none of them has the fortitude to fulfill the purpose of their vocation. But one of them (played by Tobias Moretti) does at least offer us a means of interpreting Malick’s intentions when he mentions that each of us would like to imagine ourselves opposing Christ’s crucifixion were we alive and present at the…
