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The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales 1960
March Around the World 2024
12/30: Mexico (High Score: 3rd)
Delirious, playful, and apocalyptic in ways a lot of the more gothic horror films tend to be. Arturo de Córdova and Amparo Rivelles play wildly different characters to an equally unreliable and nervous extent, making for very extreme characters that don't feel constrained to simply what the plot demands of them. Their detail makes what otherwise would be simple dramatics into these more curious personalities that don't always fit neatly…
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Master, a Building in Copacabana 2002
March Around the World 2024
11/30: Brazil (High Score: 8th)
The camera reveals just as it obfuscates the truth. Whether Eduardo Coutinho is trying to confront or avoid it, this is a performance of reality that can only ever partially reveal its subjects. What they reveal, what they hide, and what they manipulate - it's all fascinating when so intimate and so confident rather than using it to feign objectivity in some greater point about culture. Coutinho's grasp of that…
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Mirror 1975
Tarkovsky is a bit different from other slow cinema artists that dominate other parts of the world. Like filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Lav Diaz, Tarkovsky holds shots for long periods of time, perhaps with more camera movement than the others, yet when Tarr and Diaz move their shots, they match the mood out of necessity. Their films are slow, so their camera movements are slow as well, makes sense, and they do it spectacularly. Tarkovsky moves his camera…
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Marketa Lazarová 1967
Sátántangó may be this film's only rival in terms of quality, yet they are near polar opposites, with Sátántangó achieving mood through slow, sprawling, dense story-telling, and Marketa Lazarová punching with every scene of action and dialogue; as flashy and bombastic as possible.
Of course this is all a personal perspective, but if I were to visualize a potential "peak" of film perfection, Sátántangó and Marketa Lazarová are the only films that seemed to attempt that jump. Neither film is…