James Blake Ewing | Movie Mezzanine - Part 3

James Blake Ewing

James Blake Ewing graduated from Baylor University with a MA in Communication Studies. His thesis covered the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and how his films challenge cinema. James plans to go on to write and/or teach film to readers/students. He occasionally writes material resembling movie reviews at his personal blog Creative Criticism and judges people's taste in media on Twitter.

All posts by James Blake Ewing

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Second Criterion

The Second Criterion: ‘The Third Man’

11 years ago by James Blake Ewing

Graham Greene’s story in The Third Man does a fantastic job of subverting storytelling expectations, and while there are several ways to examine how the film does that, the story functions as an anti-Western. I don't mean its a searing political critique of th...

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Second Criterion

The Second Criterion: ‘A Man Escaped’

11 years ago by James Blake Ewing

Robert Bresson’s simple and meticulous account of the real-life escape of Andre Devigny—called Fontaine (François Leterrier) in the film—is similar, yet different, than the typical escape movie. While it deals with issues of hope, patriotism, oppression and li...

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Second Criterion

The Second Criterion: ‘A Generation’

11 years ago by James Blake Ewing

The first film in Andrzej Wajda’s war film trilogy, A Generation is a coming of age film set in Poland during German occupation. Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki), an apprentice at a carpentry shop, joins the Youth Underground more because the lovely Dorota (Urszula Mo...

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Second Criterion

The Second Criterion: The Double Life of Veronique

11 years ago by James Blake Ewing

When discussing The Double Life of Veronique, a lot of people make the mistake of approaching the film more from a metaphysical sense. Yes, a lot of what makes the film compelling are the ideas surrounding the notion of identity and the soul, metaphysical conc...

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Second Criterion

Introduction Into The Second Criterion

11 years ago by James Blake Ewing

If I ask a movie buff what he or she expects from The Criterion Collection, I’ll probably hear talk about an excellently crafted, artfully made film released with a high standard of audio/visual quality and a handful of in-depth special features. And while the...