See It Big: Vertigo
Hitchcock himself made other films that so severely complicated our identification with his main characters, as is the case with James Stewart’s relentless, increasingly unhinged Scottie, but not even...
View ArticleSee It Big: Rio Bravo
One of the many remarkable things about Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo is the way it lulls you into believing you’re just watching an ordinary western. For an unlucky few, this sensation might even remain...
View ArticleSee It Big: Satyricon
Satyricon might be the ultimate anti-spectacle spectacular. As if the silhouette-drenched expressionistic lighting, relentless African-flavored soundtrack, and quasi-sci-fi art direction and costume...
View ArticleSee It Big: Blue Velvet
For those who think of Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece as the Rosetta Stone of more recent—and strident—screw-the-suburbs screeds, it’s worth looking again at how Blue Velvet offers a far more complex and...
View ArticleSee It Big: The Last Picture Show
What if the old saying “You can’t go home again” has it backwards? What if we’re invisibly bar-coded to our point of origin, and we’re just spinning our wheels on the map when we try to leave, failing...
View ArticleSee It Big: The Thing
The primary aim of each character, confined to an Antarctic base and cut off from the outside world by a snowstorm, is his own immediate survival. For this, each man needs to work out who he can trust...
View ArticleSee It Big: The Innocents
What’s most remarkable about The Innocents isn’t merely Clayton’s tonal and narrative faithfulness to Henry James’s story (it’s practically blindsiding that the film goes for the book’s same grim...
View ArticleSee It Big: Suspiria
The first installment in a mystical-themed trilogy (Inferno and Mother of Tears are the two later panels), Suspiria is arguably Argento’s masterpiece, an instance of an alchemical mise-en-scène...
View ArticleSee It Big: Fanny and Alexander
Fanny and Alexander is equally occupied with looking forward and looking back: it’s an aging filmmaker’s attempt to reinhabit the way of seeing he knew as a child, but also to peek in on adult life...
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