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Passion for Movies

Passion for Movies

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Cafe Dissensus

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The Two of Us (1967)

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978)

The Postman's White Nights (2014)

Wings (1966)

Letter Never Sent (1960)

Ballad of a Soldier (1959)

Harlan County, USA (1976)

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To Die For -- A Satire on the Fame Culture

American film-maker Gus Van Sant is one of the few successful directors to switch back and forth by doing wildly experimental movies as well as commercially accessible movies. He had made proverbial awards season movies like “Goodwill Hunting”, “Finding Forrester”, “Milk” , and also minimalist style of movies that were largely ignored and heavily criticized as miserable failures ( “Gerry”, “Last Days”, “Elephant”, “Paranoid Park” ). Let’s not forget his shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock’s “Psycho” , which was abrasively rejected. By observing his oeuvre, we can feel that Van Sant is a complicated film-maker, who navigates between the art-house arena and conventional Hollywood. In 1995, Van Sant was pushed into a desperate situa...

Mohsen Makhmalbaf's "A Moment of Innocence" -- An Analysis

Iran’s pioneering film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf , at the age of 17, was an Islamic militant. He tried to attack a policeman in order to steal his gun, but Makhmalbaf only ended up in jail. In “A Moment of Innocence” (his personal favorite film), he revisits this incident, trying to imagine the policeman’s perspective as well as reflecting in hindsight on his own firebrand youth. He plays himself as a director of the film-within-the-film, which reenacts the event. The film won the Special Jury Award at the Locarno Film Festival in 1996, but was banned on Iran until 1997. Abbas ...

Manic [2001] – Troubled Youths and Unforgiving Environment

Jordan Melamed’s indie-feature Manic (2001) is a well-intentioned drama on young damaged souls who have no hope whatsover to win over their inner demons. Although, it’s not a very memorable or piercing portrayal of troubled teens, the chief drawing factor is the presence of now-familiar cast members – Joseph Gordon-Levitt , Zooey Deschanel , and Don Cheadle . Manic is also known for its hand-held, Dogme-95 style camerawork, which actually becomes the film’s liability rather than just boost its naturalism. The shaky camerawork tries to be close and intimate to the characters, capturing all their self-inflicted physical wounds and emotional bruises beneath. While this choice provides an immediacy to the proceedings (especially in the group therapy sessions), it is ultimately annoying and ends up distancing the characters from us. Brad Anderson’s horror movie set in an old, abandoned mental institution, Session 9 was also made on Digital Video in the same year. But...

Le Trou aka The Hole [1960] – A Tense, Immersive Masterpiece

‘Film is a visual medium: show, don’t tell’ would be the often repeated mantra for budding screenwriters and film-makers. But, we don’t often get well-constructed movies about people doing precise stuffs. I am not talking about the sweeping camera movements of Emmanuel Lubezki that makes everyone of us go ‘wow’ . But, I am more fascinated by the simple people doing clever, elaborate things, driven by untamed spirit (not that there’s nothing wrong with Lubezki’s waltzing camera movements). Think about the way Paul Thomas Anderson sets up the form and characterization in the opening scene of epic “There Will Be Blood” ; or the canvas of beauty and brutality in Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” ; or else Coen brother’s ...

The Spirit of the Beehive [1973] – A Majestic Vision of a Child’s Inner Life

The first time I watched Victor Erice’s lyrical masterpiece “The Spirit of the Beehive” (aka 'El espiritu de la colmena', 1973) it was a bit confounding experience. The understated beauty of its visuals and the haunting performance of 6 year old Ana Torrent had a great effect on me, but felt that I was unable to infiltrate through its multiple layers of ambiguity, in order to understand the narrative significance and restrained emotions. Then other through IMDb boards and other forums, I learned how the movie’s political & historical setting is crucial. The opening shot mentions “Somewhere on the Castilian plain around 1940”, a time when the traumatic Spanish Civil War had ended and General Franco won over the Rep...

Composition Class [1938] – The Strengths and Inconveniences of Honesty

It’s fascinating to witness the number of Japanese studio films from 1930s that focuses on the social and economic situation of the underclass. Yasujiro Ozu’s Passing Fancy (1933), An Inn in Tokyo (1935), The Only Son (1936), Mikio Naruse’s Each Night I Dream (1933), Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts , Sadao Yamanaka’s Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937), Hiroshi Shimizu’s Mr. Thank You (1936) are the few that immediately comes to mind. It all offers relatively complex tableau of underclass life which never sugar-coats their bleak reality. It would be interesting to read or know why these stories on under-privileged class had a box-office appeal. Kajiro Yamamoto’s Composition Class ( Tsuzurikata kyoshitsu , 1938) is one such frank depiction of a low-income family’s life. Similar to all the aforementioned films, the narrative focuses on the humor, little triumphs and joys of everyday life rather than simply blanketing us with emotions of despair and sorrow. ...

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