Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Werckmeister Harmonies 2000

  ★★★★ Rewatched 31 May 2023

  I hadn't seen this since its initial release. I remembered it as being not quite up to par with Tarr's very best films, and that's how I felt again today (even though I'm a committed Tarrian). There are, of course, many bravura sequences. The average shot length here is about 6 minutes long, and Tarr orchestrates most scenes with the Steadicam moving in and out of the action so that the camera feels as much a character as the people…

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  Daguerréotypes 1975

  ★★★★ Watched 30 May 2023

  A seemingly simple documentary: Agnes Varda films many of the shop owners on her own street in the 14th arrondissement. It's 1975, but (perhaps because so many of these people are old) it feels like it could be 1955 or even 1935. We see a butcher, a tailor, a clockmaker, a grocer, and so on. My favorite was the perfume-maker and his wife. Many of these shop owners are husband and wife teams. There's very little narration and very little…

Popular reviews

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  Imitation of Life 1959

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 09 Nov 2016 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I finished watching the second half of this movie for the third class in a row this morning. My students at Tisch today were angry, ashen. What could I say to them? In the 8am class, I was in tears throughout a lot of the film. Every time Sarah Jane or her mother spoke I had to choke back a gasp. The funeral was more moving than anytime I’d ever experienced it. But in this screening, my usual ironic antagonism…

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  Through the Olive Trees 1994

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 23 Mar 2015 9

  I had that all-too rare experience of appreciating a film I loved even more because of the experiencing of teaching it. The first time I saw the movie (at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens (then called the American Museum of the Moving Image) back in 95 or 96) was one of the very few moments I left a theater feeling as if my mind had split open (my first screenings of L'AVVENTURA and of Apichatpong come to…