This rarely-seen work by Chabrol is a major accomplishment, set in a Nazi-occupied French town about the courage and deception tactics of French civilians as they support the resistance in secret.
Not as purely cinematic as some of his greatest works, but Ray manages to invoke feelings of introspection as a movie star gets a reality check from strangers—and fans—he encounters on a train.
Zatoichi’s caught in between nasty gangsters and ungrateful villagers in this 14th entry that boasts great action but little in a way of a substantial story.
Zatoichi’s use of violence to right wrongs is called into question in this well-made 13th installment.
Polanski’s Golden Berlin Bear winner traverses the territory of absurdist cinema in what is a sporadically engaging but sharp commentary on power plays associated with psychological sadism and the gender and classist pressures to conform.
Sembene the trailblazer led African cinema to international recognition with this landmark classic about the despair of a black Senegalese woman made to work for a white French family.
Tarkovsky’s vignette-style medieval epic is possibly the greatest ideological film about a psychologically-conflicted artist trying to understand the epoch he lives in.
Continue reading →Varda’s work here is under-appreciated—a layered and surreal collision of imaginary and abstract ideas about a writer’s creative process, and one might even say a tonal antecedent to the modern pictures of Yorgos Lanthimos.
Shepitko shows why she was such a promising filmmaker in this charming character study that brings social reality and flights of fancy together through artful naturalism.
Continue reading →Jan Troell’s naturalistic if poetic debut feature may have been well-regarded in Swedish cinema, but it is difficult to be absorbed by a work that is too meandering and elliptical for its own good.
Eternality Tan 