Within Paisan’s sequences of vérité action and warfare are moments of reprieve, often brief interludes of intimacy between one character and another. My favorite of these sequences occurs during the 3rd vignette, specifically, the roughly three minutes of action directly after the flashback and up through Francesca leaving the brothel. The long shot of Francesca sitting forward on the bed, her head facing the camera, and Fred hazily wrapping up his reverie out of focus in the background creates a…
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllPinned reviews
More-
-
The Passion of Anna 1969
What can you say about a man who obsessively collects photographs of people but refuses to take part in humanity himself? For the wife of this man who has no will of her own? What about Anna and Andreas? The former does her best to convince the world she's virtuous, while the latter tries desperately to convince himself that he is not.
The actors playing these wretched souls have plenty to say themselves. The short interludes which Bergman uses to…
Recent reviews
MorePopular reviews
More-
The Fabelmans 2022
It concerns itself with the authenticity of a given moment, and yet it presents every situation in the most artificial and contrived way possible. I’m not sure what I expected, considering it’s Spielberg, but since it's a movie about “animosity” he’s overcome in his “life,” I figured he’d tone down the schmaltz and actually try to work through something real. Otherwise, what’s the point? Instead, we get surface-level suffering and (I’m sure) Oscar nominations all around.
-
La Jetée 1962
“Nothing tells memories from ordinary moments; only afterwards do they claim remembrance on account of their scars.”
Chris Marker’s fluid mixture of still photography and voice-over creates a rhythmic pastiche of haunting symbolism. Humanity on the verge of extinction after a 3rd World War begins to subject survivors to sessions of temporal transference in hopes that they can recover recourses from the past and future. The act of stripping individuals of their temporal identity has, thus far, “only led to…
