David Vining's Blog, page 221

Shame

Ingmar Bergman never did a war movie, and his films were largely outside of contemporary political concerns, so when he made Shame in 1968 during the Vietnam War, it feels kind of like Bergman is finally tackling the “real world”. I saw this movie once before in college, and the professor pretty much framed the film that way, and it’s an easy read of the film, but I think far too easy. Removed from its contemporary concerns, I think it’s easy to see the more permanent thematic concerns more...

Paisan

There are some filmmakers who thrive without resources, and I think Roberto Rossellini was one of them. His first post-fascist movie, Rome: Open City, was fantastic, and his second is equally great.

A series of six short films, each one has that particular quality of great short form storytelling where we quickly get strong looks at interesting characters and barrel towards a thematic point and stop at an ending that makes us reconsider what has come before it.

Each story is centered around...

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

I’ve been tracking the interesting production history of this movie since I saw Lost in La Mancha, the intended behind the scenes documentary for the inevitable DVD release of Gilliam’s first concentrated effort at bringing his version of Don Quixote to the screen. After the disastrous first week of filming led to Gilliam and his producers agreeing to shut down production, the insurance company ended up with the rights to the script, and Gilliam spent the next 15 years or so trying to get th...

The Thin Red Line

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Storytelling is a form of communication, and like any form of communication it has languages. Telling a story around a campfire uses its own vocabulary of sights and sounds to convey emotion. Books have their own. Movies have yet another.

Yet, storytelling is such a large thing, that even different mediums can have their own dialects. An action movie isn’t told the same way as a small family drama. Action movies have different ways to edit, convey sound and emotion than most o...

The Problem with the Bridge Sequence

People really do love The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. It’s number 9 in the IMDb’s ranking. People often regard it as Sergio Leone’s best film, and probably the best western ever produced, but I’ve never understood the love for the film.

Yeah, Clint, Wallach, and Marvin are all great. The production is fantastic. The score is amazing. The story is interesting and well-told, except…when it suddenly stops for 30 minutes.

I’ve had several conversations with different people about the movie, and...

Hour of the Wolf

Bergman goes psychological horror, and it works pretty well.

The movie was curious for the first half or so, as I tried to figure out what was actually going on. Not so much what was literally happening on screen, but what the story was. It really wasn’t that obvious, and, since I knew virtually nothing about the story beforehand, all I had was the movie itself to tell me.

It starts with Liv Ullman talking to camera about the story to come, providing a framing device that helps to anchor the...

Stardust

There’s something to be said for a movie that can keep up a sense of energy from beginning to end. Stardust keeps a light and playful tone and propels itself along with a special brand of ridiculous fantasy.

It’s the story of love, like many adventure tales. It shows our hero, Tristan Thorne, crossing large distances to collect a fallen star for the woman he loves (but who seems to view him with nothing but mild amusement). The star is a woman, since the wall that separates the small town of...

From the Life of the Marionettes

I bet you thought I was gonna gush over every Bergman movie, huh?

I was confused pretty much through this whole movie. Not because I couldn’t figure out what was going on in front of me, but because I couldn’t figure out how all of these disparate pieces were supposed to come together.

Made during Bergman’s self-imposed exile to Germany due to tax issues in his native Sweden, From the Life of the Marionettes is a jumble of a movie that keeps swirling around a point without ever quite getting...

The Last Temptation of Christ

Preferences

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When I originally made my Top Ten more than a decade ago, I slowly filled it a couple of different ways. One of them was to ask myself, “X director should be on the list. Which of X’s movies should appear?”

I’ve always loved Scorsese. He’s been a titan of cinema since the 70s and, unlike many of his brethren, has lost none of his skill. He’s as talented and exciting today as he was when he brought Mean Streets and Taxi Driver to the screen. He’s still so talented that, in much th...

Saraband

It’s more of a delayed tangent than a direct sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, but Saraband feels very much like a direct thematic follow through on the then 30 year old film.

Marianne and Johan have fallen out of touch, while Johan has come into a fortune after the death of an aunt. We discover that he has a son (Henrik) from a marriage predating his with Marianne (retconning!) who is living in a small cottage nearby Johan’s forest retreat with Karin, Henrik’s daughter. With seemingly no co...