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.
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.
Although it can be traced to German Expressionism and French Poetic-Realism, Film Noir is quintessentially an American idiom. Not a genre but a mood, it centres on fatalistic dread.
For my final podcast, I look at how Steven Spielberg effectively remade his first feature, Firelight to deliver a message of hope.
Whether it be ethically, legally, politically, geographically or even chemically, Michael Mann’s multi-Oscar nominated picture is about crossing the line.
Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece owes a great debt of gratitude to Kazuo Miyagawa’s luminous, shimmering cinematography.
With his Palme d’Or winning debut, Steven Soderbergh made a modern classic as well as a how-to manual for film students.
This video essay examines the films that influenced Stanley Kubrick (silent cinema, European arthouse, avant-garde etc.,) as well as the many films his work has since influenced.
Tom Wolfe’s superb account about the early days of NASA’s space program needed filmmakers who shared a daring similar to the maverick pilots.
Ari Folman’s animated documentary is different from many other films about trauma. But it is only in its final moments that it reveal its most telling truth.
Five years in the making, David Lynch’s film is one of the most compelling, bewildering, original, disturbing and influential debuts in all of cinema.
In adapting Stephen King’s best-seller, Stanley Kubrick drew on a genre other than horror and used a new motif that he would repeat for the rest of his career.
For a film that requires so many special effects in order to create the feeling of weightlessness, how did Alfonso Cuarón still keep Gravity so grounded?
Many great auteurs use similar styles to explore similar themes as lesser filmmakers. The only real difference is that great auteurs are more consistent and precise.
Going into production, Gladiator had nothing near a finished script yet one simple change to the start of the story turned it into the greatest opera ever filmed.
Werner Herzog’s hallucinatory telling of a Conquistador’s search for El Dorado etches a landscape of greed on the human face.
For all its groundbreaking effects and narrative innovation, this owes a debt to a romantic fantasy and a Soviet propaganda film.
Max Ophuls’ adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s novella is more than a romance; it explores memory, delusion and the meaning of art.
Often called the greatest thriller Hitchcock never made, Les Diaboliques is based on a book written to catch the attention of the Master of Suspense.
Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom may star, but Katie Johnson gives one of cinema’s greatest comedic performances.
Upon its release, it seemed that Easy Rider typified the spirit of the nineteen-sixties. But it really should be viewed as the first film of the seventies.
Described as the most evil film ever made, Henri George Clouzot’s masterpiece resembles Hemingway, Hitchcock, neo-realism and Casablanca.
This film lasts seventeen minutes, features mutilation, insects and dismemberment. Yet it is one of the most influential ever made.
Kubrick’s controversial film remains relevant because of the Ludovico Technique’s conversion therapy: Pray Away the Gay.
Released in 1950, Max Ophuls’ adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s scandalous play is a landmark exhibition of theme and style operating in perfect harmony.
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