You tell yourself: "This was the last time, I swear". All of us have at one point in our lives done something forbidden or something frowned upon. One can easily imagine continuing doing something wrong, even though you know it cannot turn out well, and yet you cannot help it. Brief Encounter (1945) is a... Continue Reading →
And there wasn’t light: The Turin Horse (2011)
A man is continually whipping his horse who refuses to move. A famous philosopher Nietzsche notices the scene, runs to the horse, breaks into tears and embraces it. He returns home, lies in his bed, utters "Mother, I am stupid", and lives the rest of his life being mute and demented. And that's the true... Continue Reading →
There is probably no one alive who has seen the 1927 Metropolis
Wealthy industrialists and magnates live in wonderful penthouses surrounded by gardens, while workers live in darkness and operate the machinery that powers the city. According to Fritz Lang, the film was born from his first sight of the skyscrapers in New York in October 1924. Even though it was conceived as a futuristic dystopia, Metropolis... Continue Reading →
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
You know the story: James Stewart is George Bailey, a man who has given up everything in his life to help others, while Henry Travers is Clarence Odbody, his guardian angel, here to intervene and show him how different and sorrowful would everybody's life be if he had not been born. It became an instant... Continue Reading →
“I met Death Today. We are Playing Chess”: The Seventh Seal (1957)
The country is ravaged by plague, and the only thing left to do is challenging Death to a chess match. What film is more appropriate in the times of a pandemic than the one depicting a strategy against death? And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space... Continue Reading →
What kind of man are you, don’t you even like dolphins? Zorba the Greek (1964)
You are going to see a woman stoned just because a man killed himself because she slept with another man. You are going to see people taunt a widow just because she did not remarry. You are going to see the awful reality of past times. But then you hear the first two notes. Ta-dam!... Continue Reading →
Abandon hope all ye who enter here: Los olvidados (1950)
Mexico City slum. A boy is waiting for his father at the market. He's been there for days and his father told him he'd be right back. There's a mother resenting another boy, a product of rape. When you watch Luis Buñuel's films, you expect obvious surrealism, intriguing topics, and crossing of space and time... Continue Reading →
There has been blood: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)
Imagine a woman in her 50s dressed as a baby doll, singing a children's song to her daddy inside a dark cellar. Forget on-screen love chemistry and imagine the bad blood, resentment, and bitter hatred. The daring casting of longtime enemies who often tried to steal each other's thunder – Bette Davis and Joan Crawford... Continue Reading →
Dust to dust: Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957)
A colonel is bravely walking through the trenches. Men are curled up against the walls. Some of them watch the skies since it might be the last thing they see. Most of them are mindlessly staring at the ground. Every single one of them is covered in dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It's... Continue Reading →
A Fistful of Yens: Yojimbo (1961)
An outlaw wanders through a desolate area and enters a town divided by a gang war. He walks slowly and gracefully, ignoring the world around him, even in the midst of a fight. You can almost see the tumbleweed and hear Morricone's music in the background. But what you see in front of you is... Continue Reading →