The Gordon Willis Frame
Gordon Willis was one of cinema’s greatest artists. Regardless of genre, his style and technique were so singular he should be regarded as a cinematrograph-auteur.
Gordon Willis was one of cinema’s greatest artists. Regardless of genre, his style and technique were so singular he should be regarded as a cinematrograph-auteur.
With this modernist masterpiece, Michelangelo Antonioni told a story that abandoned its initial plot. Booed at Cannes, it paved the way for a new cinematic form.
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.
Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning divorce drama delivers a story that is specific to a particular time and place yet also manages to resonate on a universal level.
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.
This short video-essay position Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in terms of what came after it and what went before. It shows how Bergman visualised his central theme of identity.
Woody Allen’s romantic drama draws from unusual sources; the Great American Songbook, Italian opera and Russian literature.
Reviled and banned upon its release, then feared lost forever, Jean Renoir’s masterpiece stands today as a victory for liberalism.
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.
What makes for a great opening? Character? Conflict? Poetry? Hopefully, more than something we’re supposed to just listen to.
When great art heralds great change, it often experiences a difficult birth. Bonnie and Clyde is a seminal moment in American film that almost never happened.
5 Oscar nominations, 4 Cesar wins, 2 BAFTAs and over $170m at the global box office. So why does Amélie still manage to polarise audiences?
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.
In a career that spanned over sixty years, forty films and a dozen masterpieces, Persona is the most unusual film in Ingmar Bergman’s canon.
Blue is the Warmest Color generated controversy with its love scenes. But at three hours long, there’s more to it than that.
Science-fiction sometimes predicts the future. Released a decade ago, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men grows more prophetic as the years go by.
Beauty, Gangster, Hustle, Psycho, Sniper. With so many films using “American” in their title, is the appellation losing its significance?
We like to think of ourselves as modern and sophisticated, but is the humour of Blazing Saddles too outrageous for anyone in Hollywood to make it today?
The films that really changed the course of cinema are often ones few people have seen.
This Oscar winning adaptation of Woodward and Bernstein’s book is one of the great masterpieces of American cinema.
The rom-com goes back to 300BC. Since then, four major categories have emerged with Ron Reiner’s classic being one of the best.
Is it possible to put a new twist on a formula as old as the rom-com? Getting Amy Schumer to write the script and Judd Apatow to direct certainly gives you a head start.
Adapted from Loren Singer’s poorly reviewed best seller, Alan J. Pakula’s conspiracy thriller is a classic of assured pacing and paranoia.
With six Oscars, five WGAs, a DGA and the Palme d’Or, Billy Wilder’s career was so blazing you’d be forgiven for saying, “Well, somebody’s perfect.”
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