Like Ships Sailing – How Mikhail Kalatozov Earned His Place in Cinema History

A woman with a dirty face stands stoically next to a soldier wearing a helmet in the film "The Cranes Are Flying."

|Dan Howard| With every generation, a film comes around that provides a fresh new take on a genre. Most war films aren’t of interest to me, but when we leave the trenches (or spend little time in them) and the battlefield, we see different sides of war that we wouldn’t expect. Continue reading

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes Us All Stronger: Letter Never Sent, Individualism, and the Survival Genre

A lone human figure wanders through a wintry landscape. Shot from the film Letter Never Sent.

|Cole Seidl| Letter Never Sent is many things: a visual tour-de-force, a technological marvel, an allegory of Soviet resilience, a grueling survival thriller. It is also, notably, the rare great film that openly rejects an individualist perspective in its storytelling. Continue reading

Some disorganized thoughts about poliziotteschi films from the Trylon programmer

Original promotional illustration for "Confessions of a Police Captain" featuring three duplicated images of a man shooting a machine gun next to a larger image of a mustached man.

|John Moret| Generally speaking, I love crime cinema in nearly all its forms. The French Connection (1971), Massacre Gun (1967), The Glass Key (1942), Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Columbo (1971-2003)—pretty much any decade, from any country, you can find genuinely great films… Continue reading