Film | Favorites

- 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?
- 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 and the Pauper meets crime thriller set in an industrializing Yokohama plagued with new wealth and misery.
- Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais). An embrace that scars. Intimacy intertwined with politics along the banks of the Ota River.
- 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.