A new disc from the Criterion Collection can feel a little bit like trying a new vegetarian dish. Sometimes it’s juicy and delicious, sometimes you feel like you ought to like it just because it’s oh-so-healthy (and then you’re glad you did), and sometimes it’s broccoli rabe.
Robert Bresson’s final black-and-white film, an adaptation of a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘suffering’
Mouchette
Babel
Didn’t hate this quite as much as Marcy, but some of that probably has to do with watching it in installments, my own little miniseries of misery. Not the ideal way to watch anything, but I simply couldn’t stand to sit through it all at once.
What’s Babel about? Global scenes of suffering, vaguely interrelated, [...]
L’Enfant
L’Enfant won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but it’s going on our worst-of-year list. The set up is interesting enough: a homeless teenager leaves the hospital with a newborn, and her small-time crook boyfriend decides that it would be a good idea to sell the baby for a handful of cash. The technical term for [...]
Free Willy
It’s not that I can’t tell a killer whale from a serial rapist — it’s simply that the dumbest puns sometimes amuse most, especially when they offer mild relief for otherwise unbearibly grim tales of doomed love and ill-fated desires. Benten’s fourth DVD release Der Freie Wille (The Free Will) streeted last week (yes, it’s [...]