Akira Kurosawa – A Retrospective

There are few names in cinema more intimately associated with the medium than that of Akira Kurosawa. A painter by trade, he rose through the Japanese film industry to the rank of director in the middle of the Second World War where he had to balance between commercial, artistic, and imperial interests. He learned his trade…

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Superman

#7 in my ranking of the theatrically released Superman films. I have had an issue with Richard Donner's 1978 Superman for a while. I've never watched it particularly critically until now, and now it seems pretty clear to me why I simply can't get into the whole exercise. I like parts of it quite a…

Superman and the Mole Men

#9 in my ranking of the theatrically released Superman films. Filmed as a glorified television pilot before they were all that common place, Superman and the Mole Men feels like a subpar two-parter of a series. It eventually became a two-parter in the series Adventures of Superman that filmed after this, starring George Reeves as…

Jean-Pierre Melville: The Definitive Ranking

Jean-Pierre Melville, ne Grumbach, was one of the most influential French filmmakers that the overall cinematic culture seems to have largely forgotten. He and his approach to filmmaking in the underworld is alive and well for certain filmmakers like John Woo and Quentin Tarantino, but much like the references Tarantino puts into his movies, no…

Un Flic

#13 in my ranking of Jean-Pierre Melville's filmography. Save for one sequence, this feels like an imitation of Jean-Pierre Melville's style instead of his own work. The style feels out of place with the story, and it makes me wonder if Melville cut down the film heavily before release. The story and character elements, when…