An American tourist in Russia
Seldom is a sequel widely recognized as superior to its predecessor, with most follow-ups struggling to recapture the relevance or dynamism of the original. There are exceptions—Aliens comes to mind. But they are few and far between. As often as not, a sequel is a shameless and hamfisted cash grab, with remakes typically no better. Yet … Read more
Thanks to a recommendation from one of my readers on Quora, I became aware of this 1996 Serbian movie about the Bosnian War a few days ago. It might not be the best movie about civil war, but it’s probably the best I’ve seen. Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, directed by Srđan Dragojević, is about childhood … Read more
This was my first time watching the 1962 historical epic Lawrence of Arabia since I was a kid, and it was well worth the four hours. For one, it’s simply great art from a lost era when films were actually shot on location. There’s a particular irony in this case because Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of … Read more
The movie depicts Nazi Germany in its final days and hours, which is fine. But I could not help but feel something bubbling beneath the surface. Angry resentment. Downfall, as the name directly implies, is supposedly about the end of the war that destroyed Germany. But that is not quite it. Even the word “downfall” … Read more
The 1956 Charlton Heston movie The Ten Commandments is one of the greatest spectacles to ever grace the silver screen and is indisputably a great work of art, but did it have a positive effect on the world? I’m not so sure. Special effects-wise, the movie aged so well in large part because a lot … Read more