Author: Philippe Vigneres

The plot of “Nóz w wodize – A Knife in the Water” is quite simple to sum up. A couple driving through the Polish countryside meets a hitchhiker; they invite the young man to spend the rest of the day with them; but then the three struggle to get along and a strange tension builds up all along…

History comes as a shock, a terrible explosion interrupting life: as Wladyslaw Szpilman records compositions by Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin for the Polish radio, distant and disturbing booming sounds can be heard before the glasses of the window of the building of the radio and the partition wall of…

This is a fiction: the film does not reconstruct real events but the plot is based on the so-called Justice Trials that took place in 1947 within the wider frame of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. The first trials of the system famously dealt with the surviving political leaders of the defunct Nazi…

While the screen remains dark, the plangent humming sound quietly, slowly lets the chirping of a bird out, and then gives way to the delightful and pure noise of a lively wildlife. The screen, at long last, displays images nicely fitting with those fresh…

The weirdest, most egregious, most hotly debated images in “Schindler’s List” are the still long shots and the more roving and medium ones focused on a walking little girl, who is anxiously wondering where to go and what to do amid the mayhem that the Nazi soldiers are wrecking as they hunt down and…

Over three days, from the eve of Independence Day to the day after, in Las Vegas, Hank and Frannie celebrate the fifth anniversary of their first encounter, break up, and try to find love again, with the awkward help of their respective best friends: Moe, Hank’s partner in a scrap dealer’s shop…

Even as the talking movies are slowly spreading, this is a typical silent movie, and a brilliant one. Long title cards explain a lot, even using a book to prod the plot to move along, nonprofessional actors perform with excess, the camera actually compounding the over-demonstrative posturing and…

Light is life while Death forever lurks in the shadow: this clear-cut opposition is nicely captured by the stark contrast of the images. The beginning of the first act is bathed in an exquisite bright light highlighting the happy faces of the happy couple made up of office worker Thomas Hutter…

Kathy is a PhD. student in philosophy at a New York university. One evening, on her way home, she is grabbed by a strange woman, rushed to an alleyway and thrown against a wall. Her aggressor then jumps at her neck and drinks…

First it is God’s eye, aerial shots taken high from the ground, as wide as the stunning and gorgeous mountainous landscape, as mobile as the tiny yellow car riding the never-ending strip of asphalt. How wild, awesome, and crucially far away of cities and people the place where the story is going…

The hand throws a stone to get the fruit, then it picks it up on the ground, and extends to give it to another hand which seems ready to take it, but hesitates, and then wrenches it. The face of the young girl who has just snatched so angrily the fruit appears, a sullen face ferociously biting into the fruit…

This feature fully and proudly belongs to a fringe of the Indian cinema dealing with peoples and issues mass entertainment would carefully sidestep, or reconfigure, with realism, empathy and stylistic approaches that do not preclude quite expressive, elegant, even poetic images. Mixing in this case fiction…

“Cerrar los ojos – Close the Eyes”: what a weird, counter-intuitive, absurd way to title a film it is. It is on the contrary with eyes wide open that the audience go to the theater, expecting a spectacle and a narrative that would move them, especially coming from so praised but so rare a filmmaker – Victor Erice…

“You are not introducing a film!”, the cross female voice from another world, actually from another movie, the 1950 British comedy “The Happiest Days of Your Life”, tells – but then the 20th Century Fox parade is played, rather clumsily, giving way to Nat King Cole’s unforgettable voice crooning romantic and…

What lies behind a successful career in filmmaking? Luck, of course, with a producer noticing your face by chance, getting impressed, and then stubbornly talking you into seizing the opportunity he has in mind. Then there is hard work and willingness to play as many parts as possible, exploring many…