Third in the Michael Curtiz-Errol Flynn-Erich Wolfgang Korngold trilogy, after Captain Blood and Adventures of Robin Hood (with several returning cast members from the latter). The opening pirate sea battle is delightful spectacle with a cast of hundreds on two ships. The budget appears to only have been able to sustain one such battle, because after it wraps up and Flynn gets to have Queen Elizabeth I make goo-goo eyes for a bit, we get the amusing news that his…
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
-
The Grapes of Wrath 1940
The greatest pleasure of The Grapes of Wrath is just how incredible this film *looks*, with the visual dream team of Gregg Toland (master of light, darkness, and shadow) and John Ford (perfect tableau-like compositions and framing). Ford observed that Toland had “not one beautiful thing in there” to photograph and yet he made everything look stunning through sheer invention and skill. Similarly great is the haunted, emotional performance of a stubble-covered Henry Fonda, who simmers with rage.
The Joads…
Translated from by
Popular reviews
More-
TÁR 2022
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
“What is the artist’s intent?” Lydia Tár asks repeatedly over the course of TÁR’s running time, so it is worth asking about Todd Field’s. One archetypal #MeToo villain is the serial rapist / assaulter / harasser who preys upon those who unambiguously do not consent. Another, though, is the older, powerful, high-status figure who intermingles sex and work, pursuing affairs with younger, less powerful, less established people who are seeking to get ahead — people who are often not so…
Translated from by -
Ash Is Purest White 2018
In Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy, a human must send a message a great distance without having it understood by the all-seeing alien surveillance apparatus, so he creates an innocuous story with his true meaning hidden in a complex layered metaphor. So if you were Jia Zhangke, how would you respond to the news that Xi Jinping watched and purportedly liked your movies? At first, perhaps not by changing much, because Jia and Xi had seemingly similar preoccupations: the…
Translated from by
