Category: Director
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The Grapes of Wrath: How John Ford captured Steinbeck’s words
Mostly known for his westerns set in the vivid and majestic Monument Valley, John Ford has always been considered one of the most important filmmakers of all time, detailing the lives of those that rarely had their stories put on the silver screen. His were the stories of human perseverance against all odds, man’s quest…
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Duck, You Sucker! Sergio Leone’s belief in friendship
Few directors are as consistent and determined in sticking to the theme of friendship throughout their filmography as Sergio Leone was. The Italian filmmaker behind such classics like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America was always – no matter what – a great believer in the power…
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The troubled spirituality of Krzysztof Kieślowski
If there is one filmmaker that speaks to me on a spiritual level – who is able to connect with my thoughts, frustrations, passions and speak to my deepest fears and regrets – it is Krzysztof Kieślowski, who with his premature death in 1996 left an insurmountable void in the cinematic landscape. Kieślowski’s movies were…
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Mamma Roma: Pasolini’s tribute to motherhood
Few artists were able to stir the crowd the way Pier Paolo Pasolini did. The Italian artist from Bologna – who, when asked what people should label him (poet? filmmaker? novelist? revolutionary?), simply replied ‘writer’ as in the one who was put on this earth to chronicle the lives of others, the less fortunate ones,…
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You Were Never Really Here: The Cinema of Lynne Ramsay
If there is one director who knows how to tell difficult and heartbreaking stories by simply hinting at the dramatic beats through the use of moving images, it’s Lynne Ramsay. The Scottish filmmaker spent a good portion of the 21st century telling stories of human struggle and existential angst while simultaneously filling the current cinematic…
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Street of Shame: Japan’s Answer to Italian Neorealism
When Roberto Rossellini decided to direct a film about children and the Italian resistance movement in war-torn, Nazi-occupied Rome in 1945, nobody could have predicted the lasting impact on cinema and legacy of Rome Open City (1945). What Italian neorealism did was give a voice to those that did not have it. Its entire philosophy…
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Outcasts and Rejects: The Cinema of Kelly Reichardt
One of the most impressive and unique voices of contemporary cinema belongs to Kelly Reichardt, a filmmaker who strongly believes in the complexity of mundane life as we know it. The simple acts of waking up, getting to work, and having a warm meal before heading back to bed, to Reichardt, constitute an endless combination…
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Boyz n The Hood: Black on Black
When the late John Singleton, who passed away a week ago after battling a series of strokes, directed his first feature film, Boyz n the Hood, thus becoming the first African-American director to be nominated for an Oscar and the youngest nominee (24 years old – 22 at the time the film was shot!) in that…
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Untouchable
Movies have different ways of communicating with the audience, some prefer to stick to heavy loaded dialogue, others rely mostly on poetry and metaphors, others use music and physical gags, others are founded on story and plot, and finally, there are those that target the audience with only one single element: visuals. Movies are motion…
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How to Get Away with a Stinker
Many people have asked my opinion on what I consider a bad movie, or what makes a director bad. The answer to these two questions could have been simple: Michael Bay and his entire filmography, Zack Snyder and his superhero fascination, M. Night Shyamalan and a big chunk of his last few movies, but in…
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