In my eyes, Pedro Costa is one of the most exciting, interesting, and important directors currently working. This is due to his principles as a storyteller and filmmaker, to which he adheres resolutely, making him a unique voice in cinematic history. Because of this I'm going to start off this review by explaining my fascination with his work in basic and broad .

An organic approach to stories. The stories Costa works with stem from lived experience, while not being…

Had to catch this as part of the ongoing Straub-Huillet retrospective on mubi. I tend to forget the experience of seeing a film by the duo, so each time I return I am overwhelmed by their work and by how efficient it is, it's really quite unlike watching films made by anyone else. There is, of course, the specific film and what it contains within itself. But more than that, it's the continuation of the highly distinctive style, perhaps the…

To the extent that Wiseman's films can contain simple dynamics, Zoo might be centered around the simplest, clearest stage/backstage dynamic in the catalog thus far. The result is one representing the product of the Zoo as a braid of public interest and private effort, a description that would hold equally true for other Wiseman subjects (most obviously The Store). Similarity exists across these projects only as far as generalizations can reach, and where Zoo breaks the similarity is in the…

What's better than this?

Paul Kandarian plays Clark in Eephus. According to his bio here on Letterboxd he's "an actor living/working in the Boston area and commutes to NY when work takes him there". And somehow Kandarian's work ethos feels largely representative of Eephus as a whole. A meandering look at the sorts of things we do for recreation and the importance these activities may assume. This is emblematic of a Wisemanian sensibility, to address the elephant in the room,…

Finally feeling somewhat on the same page as Antonioni, and that happens in a film where communication is it's most subversive element, the one that discloses the least about what is actually going on in the film. And there is clearly a disconnect between the director/writer and his characters here. While delving into fascinating psychoanalysis, the distance remains and much like Luigi Pirandello, Antonioni lets his characters roam free without doubting the primal forces that directs the film. As though…

First off thanks to Connor and Marcus for promptly guiding me to this immediately following my review of L'avventura and never has a recommendation felt so appropriate. Of course I loved it, as Antonioni's scenes become more layered in complexity, though the lifeless black-and-white has its charm, so does his narrative. And it is important to this complexity going in to this film, as interpretations often tend to err on the simplistic side. Still we explore the realm of…