Most special effects artists try to convince audiences that what they’re seeing is real—that the giant dinosaur, the 100-foot tidal wave, the alien invasion are really there and sharing the same physical space as the […]
Combining the gory fight choreography of Japanese chanbara, the proscenium staging of Peking Opera, the modernist editing of the French New Wave, and the stunt techniques of Hollywood, King Hu’s Dragon Inn was the rare […]
The accountant sits in the train and slips in and out of consciousness as the American countryside rushes in and out of focus, racing itself further and further into the past. The forests give way […]
The Asphalt Jungle is the film that made director John Huston the father of Jean-Pierre Melville and the grandfather of Michael Mann and Steven Soderbergh. It was from this mean little film that the fundamental […]
Few films have been so passionately apotheosized as Carl Theodor Dreyer’s reconstruction of Joan of Arc’s historical trial and execution. What more can be said about its style, its acting, its editing, its impact on […]
Kon Ichikawa was initially apprehensive when the higher ups at Daiei Studios informed him that his 1957 film The Men of Tohoku would be in anamorphic widescreen. Ichikawa—that great auteur who helped bridge the gap […]
© 2020 The Retro Set