Flicks with The Film Snob

The yearning and frustrations of two teenage girls in 1950s New Zealand leads to tragedy, in this wildly expressive film based on an actual murder case.

Before New Zealand director Peter Jackson beca…

A Finnish woman on a Russian train is aggravated by the man with which she’s forced to share a compartment: an insensitive young tough guy with a chip on his shoulder.

I recently took a trip on Amtra…

Three films by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass present wordless imagery and music to send a cosmic warning about civilization’s imbalance, exploitation, and destruction.

The meanings that we access t…

A spellbinding portrait of an elderly couple in crisis, the wife suffering from dementia, the husband unable to cope, in a film composed entirely in split screen.

I felt many strong emotions while wa…

A splendid adaptation of Balzac’s great novel about a young poet becoming embroiled in the petty world of Paris journalism in the 1820s.

Lost Illusions is an adaptation of a classic 19th century nov…

Artist and director Ulrike Ottinger presents her recollections of living and working in Paris in the 1960s.

Paris Calligrammes: that’s not exactly a movie title that would pique everyone’s curiosity.…

An experiment in how people will react to videos of Israeli army and settler interactions with Palestinians becomes a fascinating study challenging assumptions about viewers and their judgments about…

Guillermo del Toro adds his own Gothic sensibility to this thrilling new version of an old film noir.

After winning the Best Picture Oscar in 2017 for The Shape of Water, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo …

An increasingly synthetic world creates the conditions for new human organs of unknown purpose to appear in the body, in David Cronenberg’s latest dystopian vision.

David Cronenberg pioneered a cert…

Three stories about chance and imagination, written and directed by the up and coming director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. What an intriguing movie title! I can understand how t…

George Orwell’s dystopian novel was made into a great film in the year of its title: 1984.

I’m guessing most of you have at least heard of George Orwell’s novel “1984.” It’s about a totalitarian stat…

The film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical is a delightful expression of solidarity in a predominately Latino N.Y. neighborhood, with the group dancing especially enjoyable.

Have you s…

Fritz Lang adapted the medieval German epic into this awe-inspiring two part spectacle, one of the great achievements of the silent film era.

After the success of the massive two-part crime film Dr. …

Céline Sciamma’s fairy tale-like film, presented as matter of fact, presents the fulfillment of a little girl’s desire to know what her mother was like when she was a girl.

French writer-director Cél…

Victor Kossakovsky shows us the experience of farm animals without the mediation of human words and concepts, in a film that extends compassion to life other than our own.

The amazing advancements i…

A screenwriter couple’s stay on Ingmar Bergman’s home island of Fårö inspires an honest look at how women are represented in movies, in the latest thoughtful film from Mia Hansen-Løve.

French directo…

Paul Thomas Anderson pays humorous tribute to the 1970s in southern California in this story of a teenage entrepreneur who falls for a clever young woman.

The latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson sh…

Todd Haynes tells the story of this influential New York rock band in the cinematic style of the man who discovered them: Andy Warhol.

I’m always interested when a film about a favorite rock band com…

An evil eye changes the appearance of two young people in love so that they can’t recognize one another, in a film from the country of Georgia that reveals the world of myth and folklore underlying e…

Bernard Shaw’s popular comedy, about a phonetics professor who makes a bet that he can turn a street person into a lady, was given near perfect form in a 1938 movie starring Leslie Howard and Wendy H…