La Notte (1961)

La Notte (1961; aka The Night) is the middle of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s trilogy including L’Aventura and L’Eclisse, and the one I’d always wanted to see. Antonioni’s slow, dispassionate style is intentionally alienating and difficult to wrestle with; I completely understand those who get bored by his work. Yet I do find something of […]

Zabriskie Point (1970)

I mainly knew that Zabriskie Point (1970) was a flop at the time of release, a disappointment for Italian art-film director Michelangelo Antonioni after the international success of Blow Up. That, and thanks to a SCTV sketch, I knew that things blew up real good at the end. Palace Cinemas Raine Square were screening Zabriskie […]

The Immortal Story (1968)

The morning after I saw Mank at the cinemas, I was like Fincher Smincher, I want to watch me some Orson Welles! The Immortal Story (1968) was available to stream on Mubi and was the last film that Welles completed in his life time as a director, something he shot for French TV, hence the […]

The Driver (1978)

The first time I watched Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978), I couldn’t get into Ryan O’Neal’s performance as the lead. I felt he was too milquetoast or lightweight to play the mysterious professional wheelman, available for hire to crews for heists and robberies. I kept thinking about Hill’s first choice, Steve McQueen, and how much […]

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018)

All I knew about the Chinese film, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018; the title is appropriated from Eugene O’Neill’s play but has nothing to do with it) was that it had an unbroken shot that went for like an hour (59 minutes to be precise; basically the second half of the movie) and that […]