"The use of Cinemascope in Otto Preminger’s River of No Return (1954) was a somewhat peculiar (albeit fascinating) stylistic choice, as it counterbalanced the intimacy of its classic revenge tale: Robert Mitchum plays a farmer who teams up with Marylin Monroe, former sweetheart of the cattle rustler that left him for dead. The film relies heavily on passionate bickering between the on-screen couple, but in the seemingly endless surroundings, every gesture is bloated. ‘Acted’ mannerisms become easy to scrutinize and…

Somewhere Gaspar sheds a tear and Godfrey asks if he got copied too.

Terry finally buckled down and made his 2001 sensa centro, all pro- and epilogue.

Just fantastic. Splendid. By now, I think we pretty much all know if we like Malick or not. Although he can irk me now and again (I'm looking at you, To the Wonder), I absolutely do. He won me back with Knight of Cups because I saw it on a big screen. Seriously,…

Son of Saul strikes a remarkable balance between its hyper dedication to subjective perspective on Saul and a grand-scale understanding of the fact that this will never be the story of a single man but a single story among many men. Even characters inhabiting the spaces through which Saul wanders that hardly (or never) enter the frame convey their humanity in simple yet genuine gestures or telling expressions. The sound design fleshes out an entire world of what we cannot…