I keep thinking I must be wrong.
As with Wordsworth, I keep going back to Buñuel in the knowledge that others I know and love see something I don’t. There must be a way in, a …

If the name “Antonioni” gives the neophyte cinephile pause, he can take solace in the fact confusion loves company almost as much as misery does. Andrew Sarris begins his introduction of Jean-Luc Godard’s interview with cinema’s Michelangelo by reminding readers that L’Avventura (1960) was hissed at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.

I have read some responses to film that dismiss as (and for) being too politically slanted. Maybe, but as with Hoop Dreams and Stevie, Gilbert and James are interested, first and foremost, in people. The film reflects the beliefs of the people in it.

As a documentary, the film is informative without being too polemical. It has a point of view, and its makers have (I imagine) their sympathies. That said, the documentaries I like best are the ones that trust the audience enough to simply give it the story and let the viewers grapple with it on their own terms. In an age where docugandas seem to dominate the landscape, it is nice to see a film that is rich in ideas and circumspect in presentation.

The question that has preoccupied me since screening Peter Brook’s The Lord of the Flies is whether or not I would have recognized it as an important or excellent film without the Criterion Collection label …

I begin this post not with a comment about the film but about Claude Chabrol’s interview with Mark Shivas (originally in the 1963 volume of Movie). Consider the following exchange discussing Chabrol’s first film, Le …