Dear Cinephiles, “Look it, I thought I was supposed to be getting a change of scenery, and so far, I’ve been in a train and a room, and a car and a room, and a room and a room. Well maybe that’s alright for a bunch of powdered geegaws like you lot, but I’m feeling...
Dear Cinephiles, “There’s always something wrong with you” says Cleo’s lover. “It’s your imagination. People’s minds are crammed full of cancer and heart trouble. My disease is phone calls and appointments.” Agnès Varda’s “Cléo from 5 to 7” (1961) is a film that ought...
Dear Cinephiles, “Here’s to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache; here’s to the mess we make.” There’s an interconnection of career aspirations, fate, and love blended in with the sleight-of-hand quality of cinema in the...
Dear Cinephiles, “My whole life I’ve been told what my future was gonna look like. I just wanna find my own thing.” Those words are spoken by Elijah – a young African American in Memphis who dreams of being a Master Sommelier – in “Uncorked” (2020). It’s an...
Dear Cinephiles, “God Loves A Terrier!” Six weeks ago, I was rescued by a Frenchie terrier mix named Sophia. It’s one of the most wonderful things that has happened to me in 2020. Now I have someone to look after me, and make sure I don’t get too anxious. With that in...
Dear Cinephiles, “I’m contemptuous of something inside of you you either can’t help, or make no attempt to; your so-called ‘strength,’ your prejudice against weakness, your blank intolerance. You’ll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman,...
Dear Cinephiles, Richard Schultz: “Sir, there are people who will see this as the Justice Department restraining free speech, and there were people who see these men as martyrs.” One of the best movies of 2020 hands down is Aaron Sorkin’s head-spinningly timely and...
Dear Cinephiles, “I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves.” “8...
Dear Cinephiles, Wanda Gerschwitz: “Let me correct you on a couple of things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not every man for himself.” I hadn’t laughed like this in a long time. Maybe ever. I literally couldn’t catch my breath. I...
Dear Cinephiles, “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!” Sean Connery exemplified the cinema of my childhood. One of my first memories of the movies was when my dad took me...
Dear Cinephiles, “Thanks to you I can keep my faith in men.” “Rashomon” (1950) is indispensable cinema. What other movie do you know whose very title has become part of our lexicon? It’s now used to describe when an event is given multiple contradictory explanations...
Dear Cinephiles, Ben Bradlee: “We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.” “All the President’s Men” (1976)...
Dear Cinephiles, “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” In this week where I feel tethered to uncertainty, I turned to my old friend “Casablanca”...
Dear Cinephiles, Karras: “Why her? Why this girl?” Merrin: “I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as… animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us.” My earliest memory of being scared at a movie was watching the...
Dear Cinephiles, “My mother was a very secretive and private woman. She had private rituals, private friends, private anxieties.” I saw “Hereditary” in the movie theatre when it first came out in 2018 – three times in a row. That’s how impressed I was with Ari Aster’s...
Dear Cinephiles, “I have all the characteristics of a human being: flesh, blood, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don’t know why.” I have been amused to see how,...
Dear Cinephiles, “Tell me this feeling lasts till forever Tell me the bad times are clean washed away Please understand that it’s still strange and frightening For losers like I’ve been it’s so hard to say.” There’s so much to love about “Little Shop of Horrors”...
Dear Cinephiles, Dick Hallorann: “Well, you know, Doc, when something happens, you can leave a trace of itself behind. Say like, if someone burns toast. Well, maybe things that happen leave other kinds of traces behind. Not things that anyone can notice, but things...
Dear Cinephiles, “Now get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there, but I’m the boss up here!” The horror genre has always been my favorite. As any student of mine will tell you, my syllabus always includes a handful of scary movies. When you think...
Dear Cinephiles, Rosemary: “This isn’t a dream! This is really happening!” “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) is one amazing film. It’s so sturdily constructed. It can be taken at face value – and you can get creeped out by the possibility of a coven of witches impregnating...
Dear Cinephiles, V: “People should not be afraid of their government. Government should be afraid of their people.” “V for Vendetta” (2006) is a stimulating and eerie watch given the world today. This swashbuckling dystopian thriller takes place in 2020. A...
Dear Cinephiles, “The greatest moments of progress are followed by the most intense periods of retrenchment. That’s what happened after the civil war. Reconstruction was a high point for voting rights, and it was followed by nearly a hundred years of Jim Crow,”...
Dear Cinephiles, Jons: “Why do you paint such nonsense?” Church painter: “To remind people they’re going to die.” Jons: “It’s not going to cheer them up.” Church painter: “Why try to cheer them up? Why not scare them a bit?” I had been hesitant to recommend “The...
Dear Cinephiles, “Dear, our present comfortable state is at the most precarious sort. We don’t live, we visit.” Those words are spoken by Lady Susan in the wickedly good “Love and Friendship” (2016). It is based on a posthumously published novella by my unofficial...
Dear Cinephiles, “To Protect The Sheep You Gotta Catch The Wolf, And It Takes A Wolf To Catch A Wolf.” That motto used by corrupt policeman Alonzo Harris summarizes his situation in the ferocious crime thriller “Training Day” (2001) which – seen under the new...
Dear Cinephiles, “It’s been insane since the beginning. Actually, it’s a kid’s game. You took off of your word problems with leaking taps, and tanks that fill up and empty, and you planned a murder from it. In real life this kind of thing does not exist. Taps that you...
Dear Cinephiles, “It was never about money for us it was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something to those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins. We show them that the human spirit is still...
Dear Cinephiles, “Yes, I use foundation. I live with a man. I’m just an old queer. That’s right! But I know who I am now. It’s taken me 20 years to come to this, Laurent.” Those lines are spoken by Renato – the father of Laurent – in the outrageous and warmhearted “La...
Dear Cinephiles, “I don’t know man. I know I’m not crazy, but every day I have to come here and watch this clown show, man. Sometimes, I just can’t take it. “ There are a couple of moments in the irresistible comedy “Car Wash” (1975) that are so piercingly good and...
Dear Cinephiles, Tutor: “What does it feel like when you’re dancing?” Billy: “Don’t know. Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going… then I like, forget everything. And… sorta disappear. Sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole...
