#22 — Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012) Michael Haneke is not gentle with viewers. The Austrian filmmaker built his formidable reputation with material that dwells, to different degrees, on the significant cruelties human beings exact on one another. The appalling instincts … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty-Two
Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019). This long-gestated sequel to The Shining is an odd mash-up of Stephen King’s typical narrative tricks and a lavish tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s relentlessly examined 1980 film. Taking place a little more than thirty years … Continue reading Then Playing — Doctor Sleep; On the Basis of Sex; The White Ribbon
Michael Haneke’s Amour is about death. An elderly couple living in Paris go from a quiet, comfortable life together to a shared existence defined almost entirely by the deterioration of one of them, a progression from health to physical decrepitude … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2012 — Number Two
My first exposure to director Michael Haneke came via his 1997 film Funny Games, which was probably the entryway for many in that relatively small subset that have dipped into his filmography. I loathed it. Luckily, I think that may … Continue reading What’s a boy in love supposed to do?
#20 — Cache (Michael Haneke, 2005) Michael Haneke pulls no punches. The German-born and Austrian-raised director believe that films should have missions, usually to challenge and provoke. Watching his films gives the strong sense that he’d much rather leave an … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Twenty
Coffee for Two 