Made during his exile in Germany for tax purposes, Ingmar Bergman’s From the Life of the Marionettes is an experimental film that explores the reasons a wealthy, prosperous businessman would viciously and senselessly kill a random prostitute. As the movie goes on, the motives become increasingly more and more complex, and it is suggested that the main character is is a puppet manipulated by society pulling the strings of his repressed desires. Thus the film’s title. From the Life of…

Letterboxd Season Challenge 2018-2019

Week 17: January 13th-19th
No Disney, No Ghibli Week

Loving Vincent is a visually ambitious animated biopic about the life of the Impressionistic painter, Vincent Van Gogh. The animation in the film is astonishing. It looks like a moving piece of artwork. It took around 125 animators to paint 65,000 oil-painted pictures that incorporated 120 of Van Gogh masterpieces. This process took almost ten years to complete! Unfortunately the movie is a bit style over substance.…

Yorgos Lanthimos directs this wildly entertaining and original historical comedy that is one of the funniest this year. It stars Olivia Colman as the British monarch Queen Anne with Rachel Weisz as as Lady Sarah Churchill and Emma Stone as her servant cousin, Abigail Masham, competing for Anne's attention in early 18th-Century England. The performances are outstanding with a tight script that is endlessly surprising. There are excellent music choices incorporated into the film from Bach to Elton John. The…

Alfonso Cuarón has made the film of his career with his latest masterpiece, Roma. This movie focuses on Cleo, played brilliantly by newcomer Yalitza Aparicio, a young woman of Mixteco descent who works as a nanny for a large, affluent family in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City in the early 1970s. The movie takes place during a time of personal and political unrest. The trials and tribulations of the family such as their abandonment by the father occurs within…