FILM FILINGS 2.4.24
In this edition of Film Filings, Jordan Poss reviews 2023 in filmwatching; Christopher Witty reviews a Mexican cinema classic; and three of our reviewers have different takes on Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.
FILM FILINGS 10/19/2023
In this editon: Jordan Poss review’s 2023’s The Lost King; Chris Witty reviews The Wolf Man classic; Sam Stephens reviews John Huston’s last film, The Dead; Nathan Gilmore reviews Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film Silence.
FILM FILINGS 9-30-23
In this Film Filings: An update about “Raymar”; Witty Writes About Nigel Kneale; Poss on Disney’s ‘Locomotive’; Stephens on Branagh’s ‘Henry’; Gilmore: A Peck On the Cheek, The Grey Zone, and Boyhood.
FILM FILINGS 8-18-23
In this edition of Film Filings: Oppenheimer, Unforgiven, Lawrence of Arabia, Night of the Hunter, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Kes.
FILM FILINGS 7-15-2023
Indiana Jones and his predecessors; Fritz Lang’s M.
FILM FILINGS 6-17-23
Film Filings: Doctor Zhivago; British Film Noir; El Norte; The Madness of the King George
The Passion of Joan of Arc
This 1928 biographical film remains a landmark in cinema history as it continues to evoke strong emotion and reflection in those who experience Joan of Arc’s real life trial and execution at the hands of her captors.
FILM FILINGS 4-29-23
This edition of Film Filings contains reviews of two existential 1965 colonial adventures, a look at eleven Australian classics, one of Chaplin’s last, and meditation of the communal experience of theatre-going.
FILM FILINGS 4-8-23
Chris Witty takes us through all the films of John Carpenter: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sam Stephens previews an extended excerpt from a David Lean essay; We preview Jordan Poss’s extensive analysis of the new All Quiet On the Western Front; Nathan Gilmore reviews Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu”.
FILM FILINGS 3.26.23
This edition of Film Filings is four film reviews, and a special invitation to those cinephiles out there who have seen--or wish to see--the astounding silent film masterpiece 'The Passion of Joan of Arc'. We are looking for thoughtful and well-written short reviews to publish this coming May. See 'Film Filings' article for full details.
FILM FILINGS 3.6.23
This edition of Film Filings covers: a Jean Renoir theater experience at Nashville’s Belcourt Theater, my film-viewing habits of the last four months, an excursion in British Folk Horror with Christopher Witty in the U.K., Nathan Gilmore’s reviews of two European classics, and a peek at a cool film that is now in production!
VAL LEWTON AT R.K.O.
“The Bagheeta [...] will change at his coming into a beautiful woman and attempt to coerce him into an embrace. If she is successful, if the youth kisses her, his life is forfeited. Changing again into a black leopard, the Bagheeta will tear him limb from limb.”
– From ‘The Bagheeta,' a story by Val Lewton published in Weird Tales, July 1930.
Ranking the Coen Brothers
Over at his blog, novelist and teacher Jordan M. Poss has done his own spectacular film ranking…the complete films of the Coen Brothers. And don’t miss his follow up review of the most recent Coen film, The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: Reviewed
The horror wrapped inside this crime drama is named Dr. Mabuse, a genius in the criminal underworld, uninterested in personal gain—he is an ideological madman perpetuating crime to destroy society.
Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar
Roger Ebert called the film Bresson’s “finest prayer." Other Bresson films have been more dramatic, more exciting and more viscerally involving—for me, personally, A Man Escaped—but none more spiritually. Balthazar stands apart in its moral and spiritual rigor.
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: An Analysis
A gleaming android stares mechanically at the viewer, its round, lidless eyes glowing with the light of some unexplained inner mechanism. A subterranean city peopled by the poor, ruled by a totalitarian state above. A wild-haired scientist bedecked in a white lab coat works feverishly at the controls of some mysterious apparatus…
Ranking All 56 Films of Alfred Hitchcock…from worst to best.
Ready for some delicious film-ranking controversy? Having this many Alfred Hitchcock films to work with is a real pleasure. There are 56 films total, with 3 require pairing up (you’ll see why), so there are 53 ranked slots. I’ve come up with 7 Tiers—Enthusiastic, Great, Overrated, Underrated, Worthwhile, Stepping Stones, and Sad and Awful.