"The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 90/100 A searingly honest chapter in the life of an unruly foster child, Francois, who as the film begins, is handed back to Social Services by a youngish married couple who can’t bear his egregious misbehavior— … Continue reading.
"I believe that as much as you influence your film, the film also influences you. You think you are in control but then things happen that you didn’t anticipate. That’s cinema, and you need to be open and listen to … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 60/100 "Let the play begin", says a narrator as the camera pushes toward the window of a house from outside, while inside, a woman opens the window's curtain. It marks the beginning of the film as … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 75/100 Hadn’t heard of this movie before I saw it on Criterion’s ‘70s Horror program. The well-played ambiguity and eerie atmospherics are just what I was hoping for. Just after her release from a mental hospital, Jessica … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 80/100 Stimulating docu-fiction that contemplates the attachment of history and memory to physical spaces, and what’s lost when those spaces are ignored or destroyed. An ethnologist arrives in a seaside community that finds itself on the … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 75/100 In a wide shot, a guy with long grey hair wearing a yellow shirt, denim overalls, a beige blazer and a beret shuffles across a large gravel lot. The camera pulls back as he walks … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 60/100 Winner of the top prize at Locarno in 2018, Singaporean filmmaker Yeo Siew Hua’s third feature is a dreamy, fluidly shaped neo-noir about a detective investigating the whereabouts of a missing Chinese migrant worker. It’s … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 90/100 Before there was The Irishman, there was Jacques Becker‘s Touchez Pas au Grisbi, an impeccably crafted crime film from 1954, in which French acting legend Jean Gabin plays a worn out gangster in the twilight … Continue reading.
Written by Michael Clawson 90/100 Sturges slows down the dialogue and ups the sensuality for a funny story of romance, revenge, and faked identity. Aboard an ocean liner on his voyage home from the Amazon, wealthy and guileless Charles Pike … Continue reading.
