Tag: jean-pierre melville

Film1 Comment

Maysles brothers, Melville, Ophüls, Scherfig, Scott

Dan Seeger

The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949). This was the last film made by the great German director Max Ophüls during a brief dalliance with Hollywood, and it exhibits both his mastery of the form and the knack for scratching away at tremulous morality that probably sealed the failure of Stateside tenure. Based on the Elisabeth Sanxay Holding novel The Blank Wall (which later became source material for the Tilda Swinton vehicle The Deep End), the film relates the story of an everyday woman who attempts to cover up a murder that she suspects was perpetrated by her daughter against a … Continue reading Maysles brothers, Melville, Ophüls, Scherfig, Scott

Everything ElseLeave a comment

Kosinski, McQueen, Melville, Reichardt, Young

Dan Seeger

Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010). “You’re messing with my Zen thing, man!” Is there another actor working today besides Jeff Bridges who could deliver a line like that and make it sound plausible? In the never-ending quest to mine every cinematic artifact from the past three to four decades and turn it into a sparkling new franchise, Disney delivers the sequel, almost three decades in the making, that almost no one waited anxiously to see. What’s more, someone apparently decided that the best way to honor the zippy innocence of the original digital groundbreaker was to heap a whole bunch … Continue reading Kosinski, McQueen, Melville, Reichardt, Young