Category Archives: movies

frozen passions (film: Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Bille August, 1997)

Director Bille August‘s ‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow‘ (1997) should have had every reason to be a standout film. The script brings a successful novel by Peter Høeg to the big screen. The story belongs to a cinematographic genre – techno-thriller … Continue reading

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the lost generations (film: All Quiet on the Western Front – Lewis Milestone, 1930)

Lewis Milestone (born Leib Milstein in Chișinău in 1895) is one of those immigrant filmmakers who laid the foundations of the American film industry and whose biographies await screenwriters to turn them into memorable films. ‘All Quiet on the Western … Continue reading

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for a piece of metal (film: Cross of Iron – Sam Peckinpah, 1977)

Any good war movie can only be an anti-war movie. This axiom is also confirmed by ‘Cross of Iron‘, the 1977 film by Sam Peckinpah, the only war film by the American director who was a master of western films … Continue reading

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the improbable heroes (film: La vie de château – Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 1966)

8 feature films in 50 years. This is the entire filmography of Jean-Paul Rappeneau between 1966 and 2015. And yet, the French director and screenwriter managed with these 8 films to make a name for himself and occupy a visible … Continue reading

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love and crime in a small French town (film: La chambre bleue – Mathieu Amalric, 2014)

Mathieu Amalric is one of my favorite actors and his presence on the credits of a movie is reason enough to want to see him. From time to time he is also behind the camera as a film director. This … Continue reading

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too dark to be true? (film: Civil War – Alex Garland, 2024)

Dystopias on screens seem to impress less lately, and this is probably also due to the fact that our lives and the events around us contain more and more elements of dystopia. ‘Civil War‘, the film written and directed by … Continue reading

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‘The Master’ of our times (film: Master i Margarita / The Master and Margarita – Michael Lockshin, 2023)

Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel ‘The Master and Margarita’ was written between 1928 and 1940, but the writer never saw it published. The first – censored – version of the book appeared in the USSR in 1966. I guess this is the … Continue reading

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justice under terror (film: Nachts wenn der Teufel kam / The Devil Strikes at Night – Robert Siodmak, 1957)

The life path and the career of Robert Siodmak has been winding, full of ups and downs, worthy of the script of a biopic waiting to be written and brought to screens sometime in the future. The German director of … Continue reading

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history as a farce (film: The Death of Stalin – Armando Iannucci, 2017)

One of the most famous quotes attributed to Karl Marx (who in turn was commenting on Hegel) is the one that claims that history and its personalities repeat themselves twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. … Continue reading

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old is cool (film: Thelma – Josh Margolin, 2024)

Movies with people at advanced ages as characters are all the rage. At the rate they are being produced and released, the Academy may soon create a new category of Academy Awards – for Best Actor/Actress over 85. If such … Continue reading

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