Directed by Kelly Reichardt Certain Women tells the story of three women in a small Montana town. Their lives intersect but not to any noteworthy degree, instead just passing by like the characters in Richard Linklater's Slacker. This overlapping quality has little to no dramatic momentum and instead just further fleshes out the world, to take … Continue reading Certain Women (2016)
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Fargo (1996)
Directed by Joel, Ethan Coen Marge Gunderson, Jerry Lundegaard and Gaear Grimsrud all feel like they've been pulled from vastly different movies. They are so unique, not just in personality but by the deepest codes by which they guide their own lives, and yet here in Fargo they will all cross paths because of a crime … Continue reading Fargo (1996)
The Weather Man (2005)
Directed by Gore Verbinski The Weather Man is about Dave Spritz’s (Nicolas Cage) general disaffection with life, both personal and professional, and his plan to escape through a “very American accomplishment,” to become the national weatherman on “Hello America,” a program very much meant to resemble “Good Morning America” or “The Today Show.” Dave is … Continue reading The Weather Man (2005)
Das Boot (1981)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen Das Boot is a wonderfully intense, painfully bleak vision of war from the perspective of a German U-boat in 1941. Sure, maybe all war is bleak (I think so!), but some movies have a way of finding glory in such a conflict. Its soldiers are heroic, mighty, humble and self-sacrificing, all … Continue reading Das Boot (1981)
Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)
Directed by Monte Hellman Ride in the Whirlwind is one of Monte Hellman's two bleak, sparse westerns made with Jack Nicholson in 1966. The other is an existential little thing called The Shooting. Like that film this one is brief and slow at the same time. They chronicle ever tightening nooses, so to speak, as a … Continue reading Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)
The Match Factory Girl (1990)
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki Iris Rukka has sadness etched all over her face. With a slender build, sunken eyes and a silent disposition, she is pain incarnate. She hardly speaks throughout the film and thus exists more like just another part of the scenery, as if she is just another prop to be arranged in the … Continue reading The Match Factory Girl (1990)
The Seventh Continent (1989)
Directed by Michael Haneke Everything is fragmented in The Seventh Continent. Like Haneke's Code Unknown (2000), the film is separated with cuts to black between every scene. Some of these scenes are brief vignettes, and in those cuts to black we have no real sense of how much time has passed. We know right off the bat … Continue reading The Seventh Continent (1989)
The Shooting (1966)
Directed by Monte Hellman Dread looms over everything in The Shooting. As the sparse story is doled out over 82 minutes the shots become wider, and the music begins to take over for the dialogue, making the character's trek feel like a slow burn, stripping away what makes them human. There isn't much life to begin … Continue reading The Shooting (1966)
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