Emmanuel Lubezki’s ornamental imagery for The Revenant signifies nothing so much as the look that $135 million can buy a director.
With Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick achieves the sense of stylistic ossification that many accused his last feature, To the Wonder, of embodying.
For practitioners of the form, like Daniel Mindel, who’s never shot a film digitally, the choice here will be between The Grand Budapest Hotel or Ida.
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s anti-critic harangue is petty coming from a writer-director whose spotty filmography has largely been met with critical praise.
No Oscar category has become as big a flash point among cinephiles as the cinematography prize.
I looked back on the year and thought about single cinematic images that knocked me flat.
This is a film that most would agree boasts a whole lot of locks and scant few question marks.
Even though Lubezki is backed, for the first time ever, by a Best Picture nominee, he’s also almost entirely surrounded by nominees that can boast the same.
The Academy rarely passes up the chance to gush over black-and-white lensing.
Few would argue against The Tree of Life being one of the very best films of the year, but it remains the biggest wild card of awards season.
No film this year is poised to collect more Academy Award nominations than Michel Hazanavicius’s silent movie about the silent era.
One major reason that Malick’s films are so divisive is that they’re so nakedly emotional, that he’s so blatantly aiming for the sublime.
It’s fitting that The Tree of Life finds Terrence Malick finally returning to the beginning, travelling back, back, back to the dawn of everything.
Is it still rock and roll if there are more Secret Service agents than groupies milling around backstage?
The problem with Children of Men is that it’s too much of a performance and not enough of a movie.
Other people direct movies. Terrence Malick builds cathedrals.