Actions do not only entertain but also enlighten the plot and its meaning, through repetitions, details, contrasts. In 1191 a banquet is held in the castle of Guy of Gisbourne, a noble allied to Prince John, who is jockeying for the top job in England after his brother and ruling king, Richard…

On the one hand there is Lieutenant Conan, a conscript who is later in the story promoted to the rank of captain, and the group of soldiers he picked up from anywhere, including the military’s jails. They are commandos, making daring attacks…

Major Delaplane is a middle-aged army doctor, a vigorous, candid, and grumpy character with a mission: two years after the end of the First World War, he must find out the bodies, dead or alive, of the French soldiers who went missing into action, to allow their families to have a corpse to…

A fool’s ascent: Redmont Barry, a dull and poor gentleman, is forced to leave his native Irish village after a duel his love for his cousin Nora caused. Supported by her family, the flirtatious girl was far more interested in getting married with a rich captain of the English army, John Quin, than…

A group of villagers, fervently praying with their priest that God would chase away the field mouses invading their farms, stands still at the center of the establishing shot, on the verdant edge of a cliff in Brittany, but it does not last and they are soon scrambling along…

He had just jerked his left arm away, but that was enough to shove the boy and make him lose his balance. The victim fall down the staircase, getting knocked out and badly injured in the backbone. Wei Bu was quarreling with his high school’s bully because the aggressive teenager claimed that Wei Bu’s…

Yuddie is something of a playboy. He lives alone in a cozy and rather large flat, is incredibly attractive and aware of it and doesn’t work as his mother Rebecca pays for whatever he wishes. This is convenient for him, since he does not like to work, but also for Rebecca, for she fears he…

They are five of them: Moraldo, Alberto, Fausto, Leopoldo and Riccardo. They are the local celebrities of their hometown, a small Italian seaside resort: they are the Vitelloni, the big calves, which means something like the…

“Sommaren med Monika – Summer With Monika” is the story of the youth looking for enjoying life to the full, breaking free from the old, the staid, the sordid. It is two very young persons, not even 20, chatting in a café, after the girl, fidgeting at her table, holding a cigarette, asked for a light for her cigarette…

First come booming, ear-splitting, savage sounds of music: the establishing shot is a medium shot on a young, half-naked, heavily tattooed drummer, the settings are the kind of compact stage hosting small rock, in this case of course metal, bands in unassuming musical venues visited by young and loyal…

Shot in close-ups, an infant girl quietly plays alone. A cut: the camera now shows her mother telling a friend about her worries. Another cut: the father comes in and gently mocks her. This pattern would prove long to break: as Mandy Garland slides into her own world, getting out of reach from others, her…

Three year after “The Rider”, five years after “Songs My Brothers Taught me”, director Chloé Zhao keeps watches folks on the fringe of the American society, communities grappling with challenges and isolation in scenic places, great vistas of the American landscape where the American dream…

Slightly overexposed shots capture with much tenderness, one dainty step after another, the sexual intercourse between two bodies, male and female it seems, till after love was made it turns out the overly made-up and coiffed face actually belonged to a boy. After sex the middle-aged man…

The establishing shots show the lead character of the last film directed by Luchino Visconti battling with his fencing teacher, displaying his skills and strength. But Tullio Hermil must cut short his training to attend a party, held in a glitzy old palazzo, a party that is another amazing spectacle of elegant, refined…

Until they conflate into the final tragedy, two kind of pictures alternate throughout the montage. The first barely change: a frozen shot composition highlighting the usually stern words of a single speaker staring at the camera, seemingly talking to a group of persons, and actually to the audience. The…