The pacing being so taut, the 'firstlings of the heart' rushing headlong on to the 'firstlings of the hand', the film gains a sort of poetic density paradoxically from its narrative spareness: one is reminded of Macbeth and the ghastly unrolling of the 'future in the instant'...
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A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy 1982
A dissenting voice: a film as tedious as this, sinking slowly in a slough of male self-pity, does have positive value. One realizes the need for a third notion of time, other than reel time (time in film) and real time (clock time elapsed), one needs a felt time (Bergsonian time, how long one feels a shot lasts). By that measure this film sure do last an eternity.
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Angel 1937
The mazy baroque of an English mansion vs. the airiness of a Paris salon; cavernous insides vs. breezy violet-scented parks; the settled rituals of a long marriage vs. the discoveries of infant passion: within the range of these poles, where geography is meaning and every element of découpage bears startling expressive power, this masterpiece of Lubitsch conducts its beautiful dance of finding a path to moral generosity.
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Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War 1971
While the soundtrack drones on about armed resistance (as the best propaganda) the images form part landscape film & part closely observed work film (bullets being strung in a belt etc). Adachi's credo might be that politics & art are parts of the same enterprise (propaganda machines), but one can't really imagine either revolutionaries or the artsy being being thrilled with this intransigent film - a measure of its idiosyncrasy. Also viewed from today's perspective, after the enthusiasm for Mao and the…
