8 years ago
Features (10 posts found)
Spotlight on Fandor: “The Marquise of O”
Eric Rohmer’s penchant for neorealist romantic comedies did not preclude the occasional aesthetic experiment. His Perceval le Gallois (1978), for example, remains one of the most startlingly experimental features of the 1970s, pushing realism into the realm of...
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Spotlight on Fandor: “35 Shots of Rum”
Claire Denis upends two overused household tropes with her most elegiac feature, 35 Shots of Rum, with her acute eye for humane detail. First, she avoids the depiction of domestic spaces as consumerist prisons that place traps on everyone (especially women) wi...
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Of Tramps and Men: Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” at 75
Naturally, the first joke in Charlie Chaplin’s first true sound film is silent. The Great Dictator (1940), the filmmaker’s (in)famous takedown of Adolf Hitler at the height of America’s non-interventionist stance on World War II, opens with a disclaimer that m...
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Spotlight on Fandor: “Green”
Men dominate the first scene of Green, in which journalist Sebastian (Lawrence Michael Levine) and his friend (Alex Ross Perry) pompously extol the virtues of Philip Roth, engaging in a game of one-upmanship to see who can concoct the most effusive praise. Yet...
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Love Streams: The Energy of “A Hard Days Night”
From the very first strum of the very first frame, the screen explodes. Not in the literal sense; there aren’t balls of fire or cinders filling up the frame, but there might as well be. No, instead, it’s a horde of fans, Beatlemaniacs, in hot pursuit of John, ...
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Spotlight on Fandor: Derek Jarman’s “Wittgenstein”
Wittgenstein introduces the Austrian-British philosopher as a boy (Clancy Chassay) sitting at a table, jotting down a note. “If people did not sometimes do silly things,” the lad says haltingly as he scribbles along, “nothing intelligent would ever get done.” ...
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Laura Poitras’s Post-9/11 Trilogy is Complete, and You Can Watch the First Two on Fandor
Last night, Laura Potras’s outstanding film Citizenfour took home the coveted prize for Best Documentary Feature. Undoubtedly one of the most exhilarating experiences one can have whilst watching a film, Poitras takes you inside the hotel room as she, journali...
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Spotlight on Fandor: Joanna Hogg’s “Exhibition”
The modernist house where artists D (Viv Albertine) and H (Liam Gillick) live in Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition recalls the politician’s retreat in Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer. Imposing metal and wall-length windows gives the impression of simultaneous transpa...
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“The Breakfast Club” at 30
The jock. The princess. The nerd. The rebel. The loner.
Brought together by circumstance, in detention for a full Saturday in Chicago, these five high schoolers are not strangers, but they do represent wholly different worlds. They come from different place...
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The Single Cinephile’s Guide to Anti-Valentine’s Day Films
To give you a sense of how I feel about Valentine’s Day, I’ll share two short stories. First, a couple years ago, I had a “platonic” Valentine, for whom I prepared Hershey kisses by removing the paper tags in each and replaced them with various lyrics from Elt...
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