There is something so cowardly and arrogant about Rohmer‘s Moral Tales in colour. None of the Maud magic is present. Yes, these are all talky films, but here he substitutes discussions on religion and Pascal for suntans and body shapes - reality as creation vs reality as condition. What made that film brilliant seems unfathomable in the self-centred remove of these summer excursions - the characters ask themselves questions. Maud is ultimately about morality as a set of implications for all…
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The Naked Dawn 1955
A lazy Google search informs me that the western‘s „classic setting is the period of the winning and settling of the US western frontier between around 1865 and 1890.“ Sounds about right. I needed to Google it because, as historically specific as the genre can be, its main appeal seems to be an undefined, mythological temporality. It has countless markings of history, imbued with pathos, but a mention of a specific year in a western always strikes me odd. (Clementine…
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Sleepy Hollow 1999
If it was a bit calmer and more considered, it would be a masterpiece. Burton is so so good with wide shots, he either frames these perfect Fordian compositions of people standing in landscapes or does elaborate Wellesian mise-en-scène, playing with size and depth, fractures and mirrors… and yet it is only glimpses of brilliance, seconds at a time. It is such a shame that he insists on cutting into those wides, going for standard coverage, over-stimulating action with cuts. This…
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Mars Attacks! 1996
The sad unspoken truth of Burton‘s generosity towards Ed Wood is that he is the son who slew his father, basically succeeding by finding the ways to make Ed Wood pictures that mass audiences would accept. His follow-up to Ed Wood is his most unabashedly trashy film to date and it’s a great bit of fun - War of the Worlds envisioned as an Altman movie. A film overtly satirical of the film cliche that aliens always arrive in and deal almost exclusively with the United States. If America wants to be the centre world, let it. Let’s see how it can handle itself.
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga 2024
George Miller‘s Millennium Actress, without all the meta. Which also makes it his Sistine Chapel.
Keep thinking about George Lucas as an obvious comparison point. What people never give Lucas enough credit for is that he is a true filmmaker of surfaces, of the Michael Mann variety - he is fascinated by machines and the way their insides turn steel into a living, breathing thing; his camera loves to examine metal, concrete, glass, sand, fabric, monitors etc. That’s what gives…
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Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 2024
half the storylines in this, including basically the entire first hour, feel very Birth-of-a-Nation-y in ways not as nakedly insidious but still quite subtle and relevant - Hollywood liberal Kevin „Dances with Wolves“ Costner and his horde of Trump-voting Yellowstone fans are resurrecting American discourses from the fucking 20s, which 100 years of supposedly conservative Western cinema did wonders to erase.
the other half is passable, but like most post-Leone, post-Spielberg westerns, it’s just the pop-culture Halloween costume of the Wild…
