Josh Larsen

Tokyo Story is a work of considerable restraint. And all the more affecting for it.

There is hardly a shot in Orson Welles’ towering achivement that doesn’t employ some sort of ingenious trick involving the camera, editing, sound, staging or production design. Kane didn’t invent all of its techniques, but it’s one of the few pictures I can think of that uses almost every one in the movie playbook. The film is like a dictionary of the cinematic language.

Still ahead of its time.

The original Scared Straight!

A thrilling and infuriating burst of movie id, The Wild Bunch makes you want to slump into the dust and stare dumbly into the distance.

Au Hasard Balthazar has the transcendent beauty of a Renaissance painting and the inspiring fire of a sermon. It’s one of those rare movies that could change your life, by making you rethink how you live it.

Rashomon is a movie of ideas first and foremost. There is little room for subtext here. Matters of truth and human nature are debated in an anguished, grandiose acting style that can be jarring to contemporary, Western eyes.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is, in essence, a masterpiece of ingeniously edited reaction shots.

Playfulness is the defining characteristic of Jules and Jim, even if what it largely entails is a tragic gender gap of fatal proportions.

The Night of the Hunter is nearly as demented as its lead villain, and I mean that as a compliment.

The genius is in the way the movie’s little details and character touches lead to an absolutely bonkers climax—after a shocking twist I won’t reveal—that nevertheless feels inevitable.

It’s propaganda, yet of the most artistic variety.

A Streetcar Named Desire works itself up into a hurricane of emotional chaos, yet ironically, as these final scenes give in to hysteria, Brando starts dialing down. Depending on your reading, that makes Stanley either remorseful or sinister. Either way, he’s riveting. If Brando is calm at the end of Streetcar, that’s because he’s the center of the storm.

Dumbo ends happily enough...but all that comes in a rushed finale; the movie is more interested in capturing the shadings and sounds of sadness (so many scenes take place in the blue night).

The only thing I can imagine anyone offering in complaint about Roma is that the movie delivers an uncomplicated depiction of a secular saint. That’s true, to an extent, and yet it’s also what I love about this full-hearted, exquisitely crafted, deeply grateful film.

It’s not just the historical footage that makes the documentary special, however; it’s also what Questlove and his filmmaking team do with it.

Like Pulp Fiction, Breathless runs on pure movie love, even as its heedless editing and bursts of jazz were redefining the art form. If the picture feels slight for a masterpiece, that’s because Breathless is primarily about itself.

Perhaps the defining moment of Robert Altman’s legendary career. It was here, after all, where Altman’s signature traits were all assembled and perfected: the extensive ensemble cast, the fluid and unforced narrative, the overlapping dialogue that freed the movies from the stilted patter of the stage and injected them with the interrupted babbling of real conversation.

Farrow admirably bears the burden of carrying the movie’s dread, portraying Rosemary as sharp and wary, but with too many social forces arrayed against her for her to have a fighting chance.

Sansho the Bailiff stands as a humanist landmark alongside something like Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, which would come out a year later.

Lovers Rock is a work of freedom. Freedom from narrative, freedom from main characters, freedom from whiteness, freedom from discrimination. It’s about creating a space to dance, flirt, argue, smoke, breathe.

This adaptation of Don’t Look Now by director Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout, The Witches) is primarily an achievement in hallucinatory editing.

This is a movie that’s not only singular to the filmmaker behind it, but to the moment it’s in.

Haenel, who also appeared in Sciamma’s debut film, Water Lilies, is mesmerizing, conjuring a full person using little more than stillness and a direct stare.

Beneath all the formal sophistication and dark humor, there is a roiling anger that defines Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

As more of the pieces of the puzzle are revealed, the movie never exploits them. Instead, they fall into place the way memories do. Indeed, the way the best movies do: as revelations that are nevertheless mysterious.

It’s a thrill to watch Stanwyck go to work and assert her dominance.