Following a string of career-defining films, such as M.A.S.H. (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and The Long Goodbye (1973), Altman set his sights on the country music capital of the world. Nashville is just as iconic, if not more so, as any other Altman film because it accomplishes so much with such grace and finesse. It is an …
Akira Kurosawa only made two sequels in his long career. The first was a follow-up to his debut film Sanshiro Sugata titled Zoku Sugata Sanshiro. His second was Sanjuro, which followed his smash hit masterpiece Yojimbo. Sanjuro is a masterpiece in its own right and much better if you don’t watch Yojimbo just before. Not to say that …
More beautiful in death than in life, the stripes of her electric beehive set off by the stark white of her medical gown, a creature known only as The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) takes her first steps in the laboratory of Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive). She is not his first ungodly creation but rather the intended mate of her predecessor …
Long mired in music rights issues and considered a relatively minor entry in the Robert Altman canon, California Split now looks more like a crucial point in the evolution of film sound technology and one of the best exemplars of Altman’s patented brand of naturalistic cinema. It’s a transition point between the genre-revising likes of …
Behemoths of war rumble overhead and block out the sun in shadows carved from steel as people living ancient agrarian lifestyles look upward and see the inevitable conclusion of their way of life. Neighbors become competitors for dwindling resources as scarcity is manufactured from fear and the death of empathy triggered by …
Everywhere in the sweltering concrete expanses of Calcutta, men and women are competing for precious few jobs, candidates strictly vetted by their political affiliations, ideological preferences, and proficiency in English. Such exacting standards can only thrive in an environment where workers vastly outnumber available jobs, giving …
For Satyajit Ray’s third feature, he took a break from his Apu Trilogy to make a film about a broken man, once important but now barely remembered and then only as a formality. This man, Huzur Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), was the landowner of an entire area who lived in an elaborate palace with his wife Mahamaya …
Mixing two storylines in different eras together is daring. That is even without considering the monumental success of The Godfather as a film. It sits proudly many a critical list and even more of people’s list, but there still rages debate on which is better: the first or the second. The first excels as a straightforward film with …
The postmodern Western films of the 1960s and 1970s eschewed the American myth of classic Westerns, instead focusing on tough examinations of the culture’s predilection for war, violence and oppression. The vocabulary of the classic Western film was often retained, however, but rather than being used to uphold …
His name is Ghost Dog. He lives on a rooftop in Jersey City, surrounded by the carrier pigeons he uses to communicate with the mafia. Working as a hit man, he lives his life according to Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. His best friend is a Haitian ice cream vendor who only speaks French. On …