Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

  A bit of advice for the European bourgeoisie: never, ever travel, especially on vacation. According to the movies it's guaranteed to reveal uncomfortable truths, disrupt your relationships, and/or generally throw you into existential crisis.

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  Review by Marcissus ★★★★ 6

  L’Avventura isn't about alienation you fucking losers. you fools. it's about monica vitti being hot

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 3

  97/100

  Pure, emotional, devastating, honest, haunting, and mysterious cinema of an indescribably radiant and evocative order. Michelangelo Antonioni's brilliant abandonment of conventional narrative simultaneously plays as both a hidden lie and an outspoken cry of anguish. Characters seem incredibly shallow at first, but that's only in order to provide the building blocks for such a resonant and deeply human conclusion. For a film that builds its metaphysical layers so blatantly, It's a genuine marvel how concise and formal L'Avventura feels.

  It's as if Antonioni was born to break down every concrete rule of cinema, and in the process of destruction, the shattered pieces came together in a wholly unexpected way. L'Avventura, if nothing else, reminded me of a puzzle that looks just as beautiful with half of the pieces missing. I have a feeling that my love for this film hasn't even remotely reached its peak.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½

  63/100

  Similar reaction to La Notte—magnificent for about an hour (in this case, roughly until Claudia makes Sandro get off the train), diminishing returns thereafter. Obviously, the returns are supposed to diminish in a narrative sense, but a certain weariness creeps in formally as well, especially compared to the electrifying stasis on the island. Antonioni favors one shot in particular that I'm surprised more filmmakers don't steal, in which a character starts out in close-up, walks away some distance, and then a second character steps into the foreground—the sudden disruption of the plane is a real jolt. At any rate, the first half of L'Avventura does for landscape what the first half of La Notte does for architecture, and my issue with the second half isn't about thwarted expectations. Ditching the mystery of Anna's disappearance is fine; replacing it with the banality of Sandro getting hot for a va-va-voom aspiring actress is a bit tiresome.

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  Review by Ethan ★★★★★ 10

  “Words are becoming less and less necessary; they create misunderstandings.”

  A wealthy listless young woman disappears during a boat trip around the rocky Mediterranean islands off Sicily. She is never heard from again; it is almost like she never existed at all. Her disaffected lover Sandro and best friend Claudia spend months trying to find her, but their relationship slowly devolves into a love affair fraught with guilt and tension.

  Michelangelo Antonioni’s enigmatic L’Avventura premiered at Cannes in 1960 to a famously divisive reception. Audience members shrieked and hollered at the film, dissatisfied with his frequent use of long takes. The reaction was so disheartening that Antonioni and the star of the film, Monica Vitti, fled the screening. The next…

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  Review by Sean Baker 13

  Revisited because I'll be seeing a 35mm print of La Notte next week at The Egyptian. Was a pleasure to revisit.

  Watched the gorgeous Criterion restoration on FilmStruck.

  Btw, has anybody seen of the Carlo Di Palma directed films with Monica Vitti? Teresa the Thief, Blonde in Black Leather or Mimì Bluette? And are they available?

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 3

  Antonioni: "The film was expressed through images in which I hope to show not the birth of an erroneous sentiment, but rather the way in which we go astray in our sentiments."

  I've personally had a fascinating, checkered relationship with Antonioni through the years - sort of, in that I hadn't actively watched his films since I was a teenager, and didn't really understand them. L'Avventura I had at least liked stylistically but hadn't a clue what was going on, La Notte was a bore, Blow-Up I couldn't even finish, but for better or for worse I did like L'Ecclise. Whether it just be age or simple growth, ironically I now find L'Avventura and La Notte utterly exhilarating, Blow-Up genuinely…

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  Review by KYK ★★★★★

  I'd absolutely yell about sharks before ghosting my man too. 

  35mm. Metrograph.

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★

  It’s always uplifting to watch rich people bored out of their minds. Maybe the third world isn’t that bad.

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  Review by Lara Pop ★★★★★ 24

  #Existential Musings Vol. 3.
  #L'Avventura
  #Antonioni

  
  'Tell me you love me.'
  'I love you.'
  'Tell me again.'
  'I don't love you.'

  The little scoundrel. I knew he was no better. I knew it and yet I clung to him like a drowning woman clings to the shipwreck of her soul. I despise myself. I hear him slowly tread behind me as I look at the ruins in front of me and wonder if they'll ever be whole. I hear him sit down on the bench, laden with remorse (he isnt though he isnt listen to your instincts he just wants you to believe he is dont trust him dont go to him dont even tur...) I turn around and look…

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  Review by Evan T ★★★★

  Perhaps easier to admire than it is to enjoy, L’Avventura is a brooding, beautifully blocked existential journey through the unavoidable roots of human behaviour. Antonioni’s expert control of the elements calls back to the masterful form of Kurosawa, storms, waves and wind all balancing the moody tones of the story spectacularly. This is a key example of a film’s reputation preceding it, and although its minimalist style might elicit a vague sense of treading water, the intricate layering of its photography makes up for the plot’s intentional lack of conclusion. Tornadoes twist in the sky, dolphins peek out of the ocean into the foreign space above them, and desert islands throw jagged shapes into the night. Utterly audacious in every sense of the word.

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  Review by BrandonHabes ★★★★★ 10

  This is one of the best ghost stories ever made. 

  It starts off one way, with a woman named Anna who mysteriously disappears. Antonioni then reframes the narrative, alters the shape of the story we thought we were going to see, and uses Anna's disappearance and lingering memory to haunt every crevice, every character, and every theme this film has to provide. 

  Anna never reappears in the story, she's never heard from again, and in a way, it's like she never existed at all. Poof! She's gone. At the same time, Anna reappears everywhere, like the somber, slippery fog in IL GRIDO (1957). Her absence feels like presence in the form of the tumultuous guilt, shame and isolation of those…