Michael Phillips

Comments

The Band Wagon

The greatest musical stylist and the movies' most delirious colorist at his peak.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

A dream and a nightmare of spiritual ecstasy. Dreyer and his design collaborators create an amalgam of the 14th and 20th centuries, and somehow reach into the future with every stroke. Maria Falconetti's performance: incomparable, unbeatable, anguished and enough to make an atheist think things over.

Sherlock Jr.

Forty-five minutes from heaven. The silent screen's modernist genius and kinetic wonder in his truest inquiry into what the camera could do for him, and for us.

Duck Amuck

A duck wrestles with his maker. "Brother! What a way to run a railroad."

Tokyo Story

Inspired by Leo McCarey's heartbreaking "Make Way for Tomorrow," Ozu's post-WWII family drama remains what it has been, always: a film with a piercing gaze, directly into the camera of the soul. Emotionally, everything everywhere all at once.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

A unique and artistic picture, according to the inaugural company picnic known as the Academy Awards, and a reminder that artists with freedom and fire once (and do, still, occasionally) had the keys to the ever-threatened kingdom.

Citizen Kane

Same as it ever was.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Pure high-wire poetry, in very tight spaces.

Madame de...

The waltz sublime, and cinema's most dazzling flow of imagery, with the chill of death in every transition.

The Godfather Part II

A pretty good sequel.