Tag Archives: 8 1/2

The Godfather Trilogy

Adapting Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, Francis Ford Coppola drew up several themes lying dormant within its pages and augmented them in a uniquely cinematic fashion to create a masterful saga.

394. Amarcord

Like many Fellini films, Amarcord is a contradiction; an account of his youth yet a complete fabrication, a vivid realisation of the past, but also a dream.

352. Roma

Alfonso Cuarón has long flirted with the neorealist style. His latest masterpiece, Roma illustrates cinema is not about what you show, but how you show it.

341. Edward Scissorhands

Ever wondered where snow comes from? That and other wonders – and horrors – live inside Tim Burton’s classic.

336. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Films about writers are tricky propositions but you can roughly divide the genre into two eras; pre- and post-Mishima.

296. Un Chien Andalou

This film lasts seventeen minutes, features mutilation, insects and dismemberment. Yet it is one of the most influential ever made.

276. Le Mépris

When it comes to making movies about making movies, many directors choose to venerate the medium. Not Jean-Luc Godard. He treats it with contempt.

274. Day for Night

Francois Truffaut created the auteur theory, and with Day for Night he delivered a tribute to the art form without which he felt his life could not make sense.

272. 8 1/2

Fellini’s masterpiece is often described as a film about not being able to make a film. But really it is about responsibility, liability, lying, loving and living.

246. Dreams

If the dream sequence is a crutch for many dull thrillers, horrors and mysteries, what makes a good one? One that challenges and stretches cinematic language.

243. Great Sounds – Part Two

The world is so noisy, we unconsciously filter out all that we don’t want to hear. Much of film sound operates in the same way.

210. Adaptation.

If writers are told to write from experience, is Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book not really Kaufman’s autobiography?


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