The Godfather Trilogy
Adapting Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, Francis Ford Coppola drew up several themes lying dormant within its pages and augmented them in a uniquely cinematic fashion to create a masterful saga.
Tag Archives: Apocalypse Now
395. The Conversation
It is said a film is made three times; writing, filming and editing. In which case, editor Walter Murch deserves enormous credit for this masterpiece.
375. sex, lies, and videotape
With his Palme d’Or winning debut, Steven Soderbergh made a modern classic as well as a how-to manual for film students.
371. The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe’s superb account about the early days of NASA’s space program needed filmmakers who shared a daring similar to the maverick pilots.
366. Come and See
Widely regarded as the greatest war picture ever made, Elem Klimov’s Come and See takes its title from The Book of Revelations to deliver a vision of hell.
362. Last Tango in Paris
There are several good reasons to watch Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial drama. Not all of them make for palatable viewing.
360. Waltz with Bashir
Ari Folman’s animated documentary is different from many other films about trauma. But it is only in its final moments that it reveal its most telling truth.
Persona – After and Before
This short video-essay position Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in terms of what came after it and what went before. It shows how Bergman visualised his central theme of identity.
347. Full Metal Jacket
Many great auteurs use similar styles to explore similar themes as lesser filmmakers. The only real difference is that great auteurs are more consistent and precise.
334. La Belle et la Bête
Fairytales transcend not just generations but cultures. Which may explain why La Belle et la Bête exists in so many guises and confronts so many issues.
330. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Werner Herzog’s hallucinatory telling of a Conquistador’s search for El Dorado etches a landscape of greed on the human face.
311. Peeping Tom
Reviled upon its release and long out of circulation, the influence of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom is now to be found in the most unexpected places.
309. The Ladykillers (1955)
Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom may star, but Katie Johnson gives one of cinema’s greatest comedic performances.
287. Reds
As the US embraced Reaganomics and Hollywood found the formula for the modern blockbuster, Warren Beatty embarked on a project examining the origins of American communism.
275. Deliverance
When we think of American cinema in the seventies, all too often we all too quickly think of the great directors. But what of the cinematograph-auteurs?
270. Bonnie and Clyde
When great art heralds great change, it often experiences a difficult birth. Bonnie and Clyde is a seminal moment in American film that almost never happened.
268. Dunkirk
All boring films are alike; every great film is great in its own way. Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk belongs not just to the latter but amongst the greatest ever made.
244. Great Sounds – Part Three
The world is so noisy, we unconsciously filter out all that we don’t want to hear. Much of film sound operates in the same way.
235. Persona
In a career that spanned over sixty years, forty films and a dozen masterpieces, Persona is the most unusual film in Ingmar Bergman’s canon.
229. The Conformist
Few films are as layered as The Conformist. But whether you see it as an exercise in style, character study, or philosophical thesis, it’s a flat out masterpiece.
204. The Most Influential Films Ever Made – Part Two
The films that really changed the course of cinema are often ones few people have seen.
200. Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola’s radical adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella is one of the most astonishing achievements in the entire history of cinema.
144. The Searchers
The Searchers is both a cinematic monument and an extremely unsettling depiction of the racism that lies at the heart of America’s own mythology.
The Application of Colour in Production Design
This extended video-essay examines the application of colour in production design from A Voyage to the Moon and Ben-Hur through to Avatar and Gravity.
