Film | Favorites

Six men and a woman listening intensively to a phone call. — *Fig 1. Scene from **High and Low**.* Source.

8 1/2 (Federico Fellini). A film about filmmaking. Absurdity, the past, and artistic anxiety collide with the present at an Italian resort.
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick). An outward journey, inward. The vastness of outer space reveals itself brief and ephemeral.
L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais). A man & a woman meet, only to meet again within the laberynthic château that defies recollection.
Annie Hall (Woody Allen). A witty masterclass on how low self-esteem can engender an outsized superiority complex. Diane Keaton makes this movie.
The Apu Trilogy (Satyajit Ray). Transience in black and white. Coming of age among the flickering shadows and lights of a changing India.
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz). Illusions of grandeur in Old Hollywood? Or a timely reminder of the power of conviction & love, even if inevitably flawed?
Charulata (Satyajit Ray). A life behind gilded bars in 19th century Bengal. Yearning, betrayal, and hope stalk the corridors of a broken household.
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai). Gritty violence, quick and quirky. A playful immersion into Hong Kong at the turn of the century.
Diarios de motocicleta (Walter Salles). A road-trip through the Andes. Biopic of Che Guevara's youth, adventures, and his loftier ideals.
High and Low (Kurosawa Akira). The Prince & the Pauper meets crime thriller set in an industrializing Yokohama plagued with new wealth and new misery.
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais). An embrace that scars. Intimacy intertwined with national politics along the banks of the Ota River.
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai). Confined within the tight corridors of routine & custom, an unlikely pair finds each other in the nights of Hong Kong.
La jetée (Chris Marker). World War III. Glimpsed through a parenthesis, the ordinary proves to be extraordinary in the midst of war.
My Dinner with André (Louis Malle). What is the good life? A Socratic dialogue about everything from theater to ecstatic dance to electric blankets.
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (C.T. Dreyer). A timeless film nearly lost to time. The impossible debate between heaven & hell, salvation & damnation.
Les Quatre Cents Coups (François Truffaut). Paris, a playground, a prison. Dreams of the sea and an adulthood that comes too soon.
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou). Violence in opulence. A critique of gender roles and class divides in early 20th century China.
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock). A room with a view. Confined and injured, a detective spots crime across the block, or does he?
Tokyo Story (Ozu Yasujirou). An encounter with the scarcity of time in the accelerating heart of Tokyo precedes departure.