The Piano Teacher (2001; Michael Haneke) GRADE: B By Mike Dub Throughout his well-regarded and controversial career, Michael Haneke has specialized in disturbing violence. With unnerving precision, Haneke unfurls stories that build delicately to sudden, shocking explosions of blood and death. In The Piano Teacher, based on a novel […]
By Daniel Barnes Fixed Bayonets! (1951; Sam Fuller) GRADE: B+ War movies are an indigenous territory for a director who liked to describe cinema as a battlefield. However, Fixed Bayonets! is a little more limited by its genre and commercial obligations. It’s about an outnumbered platoon given a […]
Le Silence de la Mer (1949; Jean-Pierre Melville) GRADE: A- By Mike Dub “This film has no pretension of solving the problem of Franco-German relations, for they cannot be solved while the barbarous Nazi crimes, committed with the complicity of the German people, remain fresh in men’s minds.” – […]
Kapo (1960; Gillo Pontecorvo) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes At the age of 17, I saw Schindler’s List in the movie theater along with everyone else and loved it along with everyone else. I never revisited the Spielberg film, but I remain somewhat suspicious of my affection for […]
Godzilla (2014; Gareth Edwards) GRADE: C- By Mike Dub There is an interesting idea buried in the mediocrity of the latest revamp of Godzilla, directed by soon-to-be kazillionaire Gareth Edwards. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 123-minute film, Edwards teases his audience with momentary glimpses of the epic battle between […]
Lianna (1983; John Sayles) GRADE: B+ By Mike Dub Lianna, the title character of John Sayles’ rich, graceful 1983 romantic drama, is a woman who has two teachers in her life. The first is her husband, Dick, a college film professor, with whom she began an affair when Lianna […]
