Unlike most action films, Mission: Impossible’s distinct appeal operates not so much on suspense but on improbability.
The film is an exemplum of Jean Renoir’s skill at linking narratives of complex human beings to progressive sociopolitical readings.
However you slice up postwar Japanese cinema, Shohei Imamura is one of its premiere figures.
Like most great westerns, Dead Man holds the American West and its (white) inhabitants up to close scrutiny.
For Robert Bresson fans, this DVD edition of the film is as good as it gets for now at least.
Howard Hawks’s masterpiece organizes its space within a nodal web of slightly claustrophobic locations, always shrouded in fog or cigarette smoke.
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