Dreyer’s “Gertrud,” like the various installments of “The Bachelor” franchise, found much of its drama merely from characters sitting on elegant sofas and talking about their relationships. “Flowers of Shanghai” achieves a similar impact: it’s a film about sexual intercourse work that features no sex.
A miracle excavated from the sunken ruins of the tragedy, along with a masterpiece rescued from what seemed like a surefire Hollywood fiasco, “Titanic” may be tempting to think of as being the “Casablanca” or “Apocalypse Now” of its time, but James Cameron’s larger-than-life phenomenon is also a good deal more than that: It’s every kind of movie they don’t make anymore slapped together into a fifty two,000-ton colossus and then sunk at sea for our amusement.
star Christopher Plummer won an Oscar for his performance in this moving drama about a widowed father who finds love again after coming out in his 70s.
To discuss the magic of “Close-Up” is to discuss the magic of your movies themselves (its title alludes to your particular shot of Sabzian in court, but also to the kind of illusion that happens right in front of your face). In that light, Kiarostami’s dextrous work of postrevolutionary meta-fiction so naturally positions itself as among the greatest films ever made because it doubles given that the ultimate self-portrait of cinema itself; from the medium’s tenuous relationship with truth, of its singular capacity for exploitation, and of its unmatched power for perverting reality into something more profound.
by playing a track star in love with another woman in this drama directed by Robert Towne, the legendary screenwriter of landmark ’70s films like Chinatown
The result is our humble attempt at curating the best of ten years that was bursting with new ideas, fresh Power, and too many damn fine films than any top one hundred list could hope to incorporate.
The ingloriousness of war, and the foundation of pain that would be passed down the generations like a cursed heirloom, can be sexsi video seen even from the most unadorned of images. Devoid of even the tiniest bit of hope or humor, “Lessons of Darkness” offers the most chilling and powerful condemnation of humanity within a long career that has alway looked at us askance. —LL
Sure, the Coens take almost fetishistic pleasure from the genre tropes: Con guy maneuvering, tough guy doublespeak, plus a hero who plays the game better than anyone else, all of them wrapped into rae lil black a gloriously serpentine plot. And still the very end on the film — which climaxes with among the greatest last shots of the ’90s — reveals just how cold and empty that game has been for most of the characters involved.
Nearly thirty years later, “Weird Days” can be a tough watch mainly because of the onscreen brutality against Black folks and women, and because through today’s cynical eyes we know such footage rarely enacts the transform desired. Even so, Bigelow’s alluring and visually arresting film continues to enrapture because it so perfectly captures the misplaced hope of its time. —RD
Spielberg couples that eyesight of America with a sense of pure immersion, especially during the celebrated D-Working day landing sequence, where Janusz Kaminski’s desaturated, sometimes handheld camera, brings unparalleled “you're there” immediacy. The way he toggles scale and stakes, from the endless chaos of Omaha Beach, into the relatively small fight at the tip to hold a bridge inside a bombed-out, abandoned French village — however giving each battle equivalent emotional fat — is true directorial mastery.
Al Pacino portrays a neophyte crook who robs a bank in order to raise money for his lover’s gender-reassignment operation. Determined by a true story and nominated for six Oscars (including Best Actor for Pacino),
There’s porntube a purity pornstars to your poetic realism of Moodysson’s filmmaking, which often ignores the best free porn sites reduced-funds constraints of shooting at night. Grittiness becomes quite beautiful in his hands, creating a rare and visceral comfort and ease for his young cast and also the lives they so naturally inhabit for Moodysson’s camera. —CO
Looking over its shoulder in a century of cinema for the same time mainly because it boldly steps into the next, the aching coolness of “Ghost Pet” could have appeared silly if not for Robby Müller’s gloomy cinematography and RZA’s funky trip-hop score. But Jarmusch’s film and Whitaker’s character are both so beguiling for the strange poetry they find in these unexpected combinations of cultures, tones, and times, a poetry that allows this (very funny) film to maintain an unbending sense of self even mainly because it trends towards the utter brutality of this world.
Set while in the present working day with a Daring retro aesthetic, the film stars a young Natasha Lyonne as Megan, an innocent cheerleader sent to a rehab for gay and lesbian teens. The patients don pink and blue pastels while performing straight-intercourse simulations under the tutelage of the exacting taskmaster (Cathy Moriarty).