Charles Bronson
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L’Argent, The Quiet American, and Charles Bronson: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (1983) is the kind of final film any director would kill to have on his or her resume, a beautifully distilled summation of Bresson’s preoccupations and techniques that nevertheless strikes out in fascinating new directions. It’s simultaneously the director’s most empathetic film and his bleakest, a wrenching study of how a series of slight moral lapses creates a snowball effect of tragedy that leads to imprisonment and mass murder. Using a late Tolstoy novella as his source material, Bresson depicts the path of a counterfeit bill as it changes hands and inexorably alters the lives of those […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 8, 2017 -
Laughing Matters (and Not)
The Squid and the Whale The Squid and the Whale was, for Noah Baumbach, a rare and blessed thing: an honest to god new beginning. Baumbach’s directing career started strong (his first two films, Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy, were both released before he turned 30) but sat idle for eight years between Mr. Jealousy and the 2005 Sundance premiere of The Squid and the Whale, which brought Baumbach back with a passion. Watching the film, you get the sense that the wasteland years created within him a burning passion to scream this autobiographical story as furiously as possible […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2016
