interests include: classic hollywood, silent film, historical avant-garde, latin american cinema, HK/chinese cinema
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
The Phantom of the Convent 1934
Setup is reminiscent of Universal horror, the trio of young friends/lovers stranded in the woods take refuge in the old haunted space, where their hidden desires come to the surface in bold ways; draws on the convent environment and themes of religiosity and the supernatural really well, and the cinematography is so polished throughout — the dark blacks of the night, the luminous wandering figures through the corridors.
-
The Executioner 1963
Likely one of the outwardly-facing films from Franco's Spain, directed to international festivals etc., to show off a presumed 'liberal' national cultural sphere. Interesting how elements of Antonioni's art-film meditations on bourgeois melancholy (see: the Mediterranean locations, the sunglasses, the touristic wandering) are deformed here into something far more explicitly pointed, darkly satirical.
Popular reviews
More-
Céline and Julie Go Boating 1974
Rivette anticipates VHS and DVD culture as the characters Celine and Julie replay the same narrative (a strangely stilted, period melodrama of a love-triangle and a child in trouble) over and over, entering the world of melodrama by sucking on a candy (the equivalent of pressing play with your remote control). Celine and Julie (re-)watch the same scenes in different sequencings; with actors being swapped one for another; with the conceit that a child can "pause" the action by looking…
-
The Kneeling Goddess 1947
It is pretty cool how Gavaldón and crew manipulate the architecture of Antonio's (Arturo de Córdova) mansion to provide a kind of schematic framework for the film as a whole. The most prominent feature of the house is one long, expansive hall, stretching seemingly from one end of the house to the other. At each end there is a piece of art: a painting of Antonio's wife Elena above the fireplace, and a marble statue of his lover Raquel (María…
