Features
You’ve seen a movie inspired by Lawrence of Arabia, no doubt. You may well have seen a movie that parodies it, a sincere form of cinematic flattery. You’ve certainly seen bits and pieces replayed in every Academy Awards montage. But if you haven’t seen Lawrence on the big screen, then you just haven’t seen it all.
Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats, Bernard Rose’s Mr. Nice, Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara's Bhutto
Michael Brandt’s The Double, Leila Kilani’s On the Edge, Ahmed el-Maânouni’s Oh the Days!, Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Position Among the Stars
The first clue is in the title. Not in its meaning exactly, but in the fact that when Jacques Tati’s 1967 cri de coeur, three painful years in the making, was finally released in French cinemas, the title was in English. Gasp!
The Masque of the Red Death, Lost Highway, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, Kill List, The Howling, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fear(s) of the Dark
The Shining turned out to be, paradoxically, Kubrick’s most controlled and most chaotic film, an exquisite structure that finally busts apart, as though with an axe.
Inferno Towering The, Lingo of the Lost, Empire of Evil, The Death of the Gorilla, Señora con flores, Between Gold, Gazette, Sack Barrow, The Unstable Object, Studies for the Decay of the West, Jhana and the Rats of James Olds or 31 days/31 videos
Home entertainment systems are excellent, small-scale approximators of Dolby-equipped movie theaters, but in order to fully appreciate Alien, you really do have to see it on a towering screen and experience the uncanny sensation.
Alexander Sokurov’s Faust, William Friedkin’s Killer Joe, Jafar Panahi’s This Is Not a Film
Nicolas Provost’s The Invader, Steve McQueen’s Shame, Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day on Earth
Amir Naderi’s Cut, Michael Glawogger’s Whores’ Glory, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method
Cynthia Maughan, Paul McCarthy and William Wegman, Georges Perec and Bernard Queysanne, Glauber Rocha
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Joseph von Sternberg’s 1935 The Devil Is a Woman, Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life, Alberto Cavalanti’sWent the Day Well?, Mervyn Leroy and Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933
Not knowing the film’s importance affected my viewing of Autumn Execution, which came across as a smoothly crass entertainment. It’s a prison drama, romance, and occasional fighting flick—and it would perhaps come across as wild if it didn’t feel so sedentary.