1960s
The Kino Lorber re-release of eight shorts and six features by Brazillian New Wave director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade is a true cinematic gift.
The Color of Pomegranates offers an experience of careful, questioning celebration that combines appreciation of artistic beauty with cognizance of worldly suffering.
With a re-release on 70mm, we look back at the sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, which continues to astound after 50 years.
On the eve of its 50th anniversary, Claude Berri’s autobiographical drama The Two Of Us remains as heartwarming as ever, offering a look at one of the greatest conflicts in history and the prejudices it triggered through a child’s eyes.
Matthew Roe introduces Anarchic Cinema, the beginning of a new series focusing on the evolution of art from the obvious to the complex.
Joan Crawford & Bette Davis’ feud is one of classic Hollywood legend; we look at What Ever Happened To Baby Jane and how they became rivals.
In this edition of the nominated film you may have missed series, we discuss the classic 1961 sports drama The Hustler, starring Paul Newman.
With the release of the FX series Feud, there’s no better time to revisit Robert Aldrich’s histrionic horror, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane.
A dazzling picture that’s as comedic as it is entertaining, bursting with a Brazilian energy that brings to mind the Bossa Nova rhythms of Sergio Mendes.
One of the first films from Sub-Saharan Africa to make waves on the international stage, Black Girl remains nothing less than masterful.
La La Land was one of last year’s big hits, and if you’ve read much about it, you’ve probably heard Jacques Demy cited as an influence. And he should be – not for nothing does the word “parapluies” appear near the place where La La Land’s main character works, a direct shout-out to the French title of Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Of course, it would be a mistake to put too much emphasis on him when La La Land draws on plenty of other influences, including various strains of American musical, Nicholas Ray, Powell and Pressburger, and maybe even Alfred Hitchc*ck.
The other night, when my friend and I sat down to watch the 1967 cult classic, Valley Of The Dolls, I came across a Netflix member review that claimed: “It’s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s without morals or class.” “OK, I’m sold,” my friend said.
Frank Perry ’s 1968 film The Swimmer is adapted at length from the 12-page short story of the same name by famed American author John Cheever . It is the story of Ned Merrill (perhaps the finest performance of Burt Lancaster ’s impressive career), whose summer culminates in a trip through various neighbours’ pools until reaching his own home at the end of a large and affluent county of mansions. Only, what starts as a summer begins to feel as if it goes on for years.
For Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, the artist was inextricably joined to his society, both its benefits and its ills. Tarkovsky defined these colloquies between society and an individual artist as “dialectics of personality.” In other words, individual development was indefinably caught-up within personal and distant interactions with a society.
About midway through Andrei Tarkovsky’s feature 1962 film debut of Ivan’s Childhood, in the midst of a Russian battlefield field torn asunder during World II, a cross is backlit by a setting sun. The cross is obscured in shadow and yet its beauty remains. A spiritual man, Tarkovsky was never afraid to ask questions about spiritual matters.