I Hated Black And White Movies
Movie reviews from a film ignoramus turned fanatic.
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 →
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 →
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 dead body of Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, floats in the swimming pool at a mansion on Sunset Boulevard. In a flashback, the dead man as a narrator retells the events leading to his death. Directed by Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard (1950) tells the story of grand delusions, failure and defense mechanisms. Norma's face... Continue Reading →
When a person mentions Fellini, it always invokes the familiar titles in one's mind: Amarcord, La Dolce Vita, and, of course, 8 1/2. But for me, Federico Fellini is Nights of Cabiria, which tells the story of a prostitute roaming the streets and finding nothing but misery along the road. Giulietta Masina's Cabiria is similar... Continue Reading →
Initially, Night of the Hunter (1955) was not a critical nor box-office success, and Charles Laughton never directed another film. However, over the years, it has come to be regarded as one of the best movies ever made. I watched it a couple of months ago, sad for missing it when it was first screened... Continue Reading →
The film starts with an X-ray of a man's stomach while the narrator announces that our protagonist is dying of stomach cancer. There is no traditional suspense. We don't get that in life either. This is not a question of whether our hero will live or die. This is the story about whether he'll be... Continue Reading →
The saddest story of all time comes from Tokyo. Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953) depicts a universal heartbreak by telling a story of an elderly couple — Tomi and Shūkichi — who travel to Tokyo to visit their children. The film does not exploit the moments in which children ignore their parents because they're busy... Continue Reading →
In 2017, BBC conducted a poll to announce the funniest movie ever made, and the winner was Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959). Its plot is a classic screwball plot: two musicians dress in drag and go through an adventure, with romantic elements along the way. Curtis and Lemmon as Josephine and Daphne. Joe, played by Tony Curtis having... Continue Reading →
I first watched Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957) in my bed, and at the very instant the film was over, I regretted watching it like this instead of in a theater. Little did I know that our local independent theater will screen it only a couple of months later, and I finally got the opportunity to... Continue Reading →
I Hated Black And White Movies 