Favorite films

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2003

★★★★★ Added

What comes after the blues?

1994

9

Here's what I said when I introduced this film at the ICA a few weeks ago:

It is perhaps surprising that Rivette should have returned to the period drama in 1993, given that his two previous efforts in this genre, La Religieuse and Hurlevent, had been by his own frustrating experiences. But what Rivette referred to as the 'mise en scene film with costumes’ was a persistent interest, represented in all the stages of his career; moreover, by the…

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2024

22

He has no grasp of rhythm, variation, dynamics, shape. He knows one kind of scene, a crescendo whose climax must be bolstered by loud dissonant strings, which then cuts to the next scene. This happens over and over again for 2 hours. This director, who thinks himself above the prose of cinema, which he doesn’t understand and cannot use, aims for poetry and achieves doggerel. Having ignored the history of cinema, he thinks shot/reverse-shots, which he hates, can only be…

2024

7

By the 50th consecutive centre-framed composition I wanted to go home.

Incidentally, you probably couldn’t make a film less in the spirit of Kiyoshi Kurosawa if that was your intention. Not only the camera (KK is about the least restricted, most versatile director of the camera working today, the one most invested in the possibilities of lateral and projective space) but the lead-footed telegraphing mistaken for oppressive consistency. If you could reduce Kurosawa to one principle, it would be the…

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