Author Archives: geofferys

This Mexican film is widely known for its outright blatant criticism of the Catholic Church In its defense, the movie isn’t the case of Catholic bashing that is often thought to be. In fact, this rather unfocused, all-over-the-map movie would be a lot better if it pared down its plots and characters to a fewContinue reading “The Crimes of Padre Amaro”

The Milky Way is unique in Bunuel’s film history and resonant with his ideas and beliefs. Starting off, two pilgrims are traveling on the road from Saint Jacques in Paris to Santiago in Spain. It is the traditional plain format of the down and out, surviving as road bums. It is also even more similar toContinue reading “Milky Way”

Within In the Mood for Love Wong chose to transform an old hospital for British soldiers that was left vacant. He did so perhaps because both buildings resembled the type of buildings in the 1950s. Mr Chow and Mrs Chang may or may not have given sensual expression to their affair in room 2046. WithinContinue reading “In the Mood for Love”

Stories containing swordplay have been a way of Japanese cinema for a long time holding the same place in the cultures of the audience that the western did for Americans. Akira Kurosawa, a well-known director who had created an international reputation in the 1950s was an avid user of the Hollywood method in cinema andContinue reading “Seven Samurai”

Completed in 1955, Satyajit Ray’s astonishing debut, Pather Panchali creates a wonderfully detailed picture of a Bengali village where a mother gets into debt while raising a daughter and a small son and caring for an ancient aunt without much help from her husband, a dreamer, who thinks his education has placed him above physicalContinue reading “Pather Panchali”

After being unemployed for two years, Antonio Ricci gets offered a job putting up posters on the walls of post-war Rome, but only if he has a bicycle. Attaining one is extremely difficult, but he succeeds, and his wife Maria and his young son, Bruno, are thrilled for him. However, on his first day atContinue reading “Bicycle Thieves”

Metropolis illustrates what many great films do by creating a time, place, and characters so abstract that they become fixed in our array of images for picturing the world. The ideas of Metropolis have been widely absorbed into pop culture so much that its cruel future city is feared by viewers. Lang filmed for nearlyContinue reading “Metropolis”

Francois Truffaut’s first film The 400 Blows  was an autobiographical film. It is one of the well-known examples of cinema in the first-person. Through telling the life of the young rebel Antoine Doinel, Truffaut was moving both towards the future and back to the past by remembering his own experiences as a child yet whileContinue reading “400 Blows”

This film is extremely focused on the new possibilities of cinema ultimately filled with new ideas, stuffed with energy and screaming glimpses of the New Wave. Throughout there are trick-shots, split-screens, stop-motions, slo-mo and speeded up action scenes. The title itself describes what is happening, we watch the cameraman record the images we are presented. The filmContinue reading “Man with the movie camera”

In a world where regular people are grounded down by a machinery beyond their understanding or control, anonymity is key. The realistic cast, in the sense of everyday man, laid the groundwork for one of the greatest cinematic pieces in film history, Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 The Battle of Algiers. The director wanted to acknowledge the uprising thatContinue reading “Battle of Algiers”