the burning reel

Film 1 (of 365) To the Wonder Screenshot from   Terrence Malick's   To the Wonder Terrence Malick's  To the Wonder  pushes the filmmaker's visual style further to abstract than it has ever been. For those of you unfamiliar with Malick's work he continues to push story and plot to the side in favor of powerfully emotional moving imagery. However, this is also a problem. The law of diminishing returns is alive and working in To the Wonder .  So much visual information is being poured over the viewer for such a long time (110 minutes) that I often found myself daydreaming. To be fair, Malick's Tree of Life  is much the same. For some reason I was touched and moved by that film so much more than I was by this one. In Tree of Life  we are in a childhood memory and experiencing an almost spiritual exploration of the character. This means the cinematography was visually supporting the narrative. Granted, it was booed at Cannes. So speaking for...

A screenshot of Olga Kurylenko from Terrence Malick's To the Wonder . I have long desired to watch one movie a day for a year and then write about it online (arguably I should be doing this anyway). First of all I'm doing it for primarily selfish reasons. I want to start expanding the library of cinema in my head and make myself a better storyteller. There are several movie "lists" out there that I can choose from: Roger Ebert's Great Movies  and the Criterion Collection  to name a couple. I could simply pick a list and start viewing from the first to the last. That sounds like a logistical nightmare. Instead I'll sample what I can of those lists  from what I have - namely Hulu and Netflix. This is all well and good, but I want your  input! What should I start with? It's my goal to have a weekly list released on Sunday to give you an idea of what I'll be watching for the next week. I'll spice it up each week with films ranging from co...

The creation of Schindler's List started with Poldek Pfefferberg , a holocaust survivor who persistently pushed for Oskar Schindler's story to be told on film. His efforts began very shortly after the war, but the fruits of his constancy did not take shape until 1980, when the Austrian novelist Thomas Keneally agreed to write the book Schindler's Ark . After it was published in 1982, Pfefferberg began pushing the idea of a film once again, but this time to Steven Spielberg . It would take 11 years before Spielberg felt capable of tackling the subject matter, but the result of Pfefferberg's tenacity paid off. The scope of Schindler's List is so vast that a book could be written about it in the name of critical analytics. This is not only a great film, but an important one. Every decision made during its inception has culminated into a brilliant masterpiece, and it is not insignificant that Spielberg won his first Oscar for this film. Several decisions were...

It has become increasingly popular, in our modern society, to view the role of the critic with more aggression than was previous. This comes mainly from the divergence of the critic from his audience. Our society today places emphasis on the individual, who need only surround him or herself with those of likeminded interests and opinions. Outside opinions are not welcome to the individual, who holds his or her beliefs to be the highest and most supreme authority. Often enough the individual believes they are the beacon of truth, transmitting a message of absolutes, which they apparently received from within their closed off adolescent experience. The narcissistic hold on the public has been ever tightening with the onset of social networking sites and other web based social media, placing the individual in a position of influential power over others, without any proper understanding of that influence or power, and without the slightest credentials for what they are pushing. Th...

The unique approach of analysis in the films I will be discussing has prompted me to write this article. Firstly, I want you to be aware of what not to expect. This is not a site where you will find simple movie reviews or ratings. It is for critically analyzing motion pictures as a work of art; understanding their individual purpose and place in our culture. However, let me not be so pompous as to exclude the occasional rant or rave. With that being said, let me establish the way in which each film will be analyzed. We must all agree, up front, that motion pictures are art. Granted, there is some really bad art out there, but it is art nonetheless. In order to analyze movies as art we must understand what a critic is, and what his relationship is to art. The first critic of worthy note is often cited as Plato . From there we can examine Aristotle and the many theorists and critics that have come after them. No, I won't be citing each of these men during my critiques. I w...

Cinema. It is the emotional expression of an artist through the medium of light and sound, created with an army and imagination. I am enamored with cinema, as I'm sure you must be, or you wouldn't be reading this. This article will not immerse you in philosophical banter -- that is for another blog . Instead, this article is going to outline what you can expect from this site and future posts. Firstly, the articles you will find here are a creative exercise for myself. My intentions are to write critical analysis of motion pictures, be they old or new. If, however, my tastes change in some form or fashion, I will not hold back my desires to write of such things. On the other hand, I have started another blog for writings which stray too far from the intended nature of this page. I do encourage critical analysis of my writings from others, such as yourself. If my structure does not flow or my ideas are disjointed, please, by all means, let me know . As I stated befor...