Mulholland Dr. is one of those films whose impact is so overwhelming for me that I hardly know where to begin when writing about it. When I walked outside after the first time I saw it, stepping out into a bright spring day, I felt disoriented, my entire
A lot has been said about the metafictional genius of Robert Altman's The Player, in which the Hollywood producer Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is unwittingly involved in a very Hollywood-style story of murder, sexual intrigue, and duplicity as his career
The singular title of Bruce Conner's A Movie positions this avant-garde short as though it were a prototypical example for the entire medium. In fact, Conner's film is the self-conscious inheritor of a particular tradition within the movies, a particular
Two Or Three Things I Know About Her marks a crucial stage in the career of Jean-Luc Godard. It is perhaps the first film in which he explicitly elucidates and rigorously develops an idea that had been present, in more or less implicit form, ever since
Eric Rohmer's A Tale of Springtime opens with a dialogue-free five minute stretch that is, from a director known for his endlessly talky, conversational films, notable for its quietude and simplicity. Jeanne (Anne Teyssèdre) drives to an empty, messy
I first saw Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, somewhat perversely, in a class on documentary film. It was an interesting setting in which to see the film because, though Marker certainly uses the documentary genre and its conventions, the film is anything
I am, for the first time, introducing a new ongoing series here at Only the Cinema. FILMS I LOVE will provide some contrast from my usual posting format, where I generally aim to strike a balance between journalistic reviewing and analytical criticism
Woody Allen's tribute to the American musical comedy, Everyone Says I Love You, is a ramshackle ode to a mostly lost artform, occasionally failing in various ways but more often succeeding by being as moving, funny, and charming as the films it seeks
The Narrow Margin is a tight, economical thriller which constricts its action almost entirely to a train. The hard-boiled, snub-nosed police detective Brown (Charles McGraw) is enlisted along with his partner to pick up the widow (Marie Windsor) of murdered
Poison was the first feature for Todd Haynes, following up on the super-low-budget home-video aesthetics of his infamous short Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. In Poison, Haynes employs a multitude of cinematic styles and reference points in order
