Au Hasard Balthazar Is A Boldly Grim Cinematic Experience

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #35
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #16                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            One of the biggest no-no's in the world of cinema is hurting animals. Kill all the people you like (so long as they ain't kids) but hurting an innocent animal? You've gone too far. That's a really understandable phenomenon to me because animals are awesome and the sight of seeing an innocent creature with less capabilities than a human being experiencing pain just feels icky. That's why I've never been big on hunting and that's why movies have typically eschewed showing animals in dire pain, though there are exceptions of course. Satantango decided to just abuse a poor cat in one of its worst and most pointless scenes while Old Yeller is famous for its climax that results in the demise of the titular canine.

Journey To Italy Is A Quietly Tragic Romantic Drama NOT A Concert Movie About Journey Performing In Italy As I Thought

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #31
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #12

We have plenty of movies about people falling in love, with the subgenre thriving because of people of all genders getting to live vicariously through the characters on-screen engaging in a perfect romance they know can't possibly exist in the real world. There's plenty of those movies I like but I also tend to gravitate heavily towards movies with more realistic depictions of romance, specifically, one's that show people in either romantic partnerships or marriages that are crumbling and how that deteriorating relationship affects both people. That's why Richard Linklater's Before Midnight is so excellent, among many many other reasons!

Ugetsu Shows The Price We Pay For Too Much Escapism

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #26
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #50 (tied with City Lights and La Jetee)

Over here in America, we've been taking a fancy to remaking American fairy tale movies (which are typically based on folklore from other countries because what don't we steal from other places and claim as our own?) that have a strong nostalgic connection with general audiences with the likes of Beauty And The Beast and Cinderella. Back in 1953, director Kenji Mizoguchi undertook a similar task of reconfiguring well-known stories into a new cinematic incarnation though, in his case, he was handling two 18th century stories penned by Ueda Akinari that would make up the groundwork for the motion picture known as Ugetsu.

In The World Of La Jetee, Time Travel Can't Solve Everything

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #25
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #50 (tied with City Lights and Ugetsu)

And now it's time for the only short film on the Sight & Sound Greatest 50 Films List, La Jetee. This one's a French short film from director Chris Marker, one that uses high-concept notions of time travel to probe into universal human experiences, just like all of the great time travel movies such as Back To The Future, Looper, The Terminator and NOT Hot Tub Time Machine 2. This one's use of time travel hews closer to the likes of the Terminator movies in terms of tone and setting though due to it utilizing time travel in a post-apocalyptic setting where hope has become scarce and time travel is seen as a last hope to help the human race.

The Way We Approach Christianity Makes Up The Core Of The Magnificent Ordet

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #24
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #19

One of the best parts about going through all these Sight & Sound 50 Greatest Films titles is discovering so many great movies centered around theology. I'm a proud Christian but I've been dismayed that thought-provoking modern-day Christian movies are few and far in between (though Noah and Silence do prove they can exist!). But going through all these movies has allowed me to discover a number of faith-oriented movies I would have likely taken forever to discover otherwise, one's that blow the likes of God's Not Dead and War Room out of the water and then some. As you likely suspect by now, one such film is the 1995 Carl Theodore Dryer movie Ordet.

"Why Ya Gotta Be Gertrud? Don't You Know I'm Human Too?"

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #22
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #42 (tied with Panter Panchali, Some Like It Hot, Pierrot Le Fou, Playtime and Close-Up)

Just as it can be tricky to keep the flame on a candle lit for an extended period of time, so it is that attempting to keep romantic connections that just aren't clicking going is a similarly futile effort that'll just hurt both parties in the long term despite seeming like an easy band-aid to the whole predicament in the short time. This isn't really an all that complex solution, but it's one that many don't want to embrace since it'll mean they'll experience endless amounts of despair stemming from the end of a relationship they hold near and dear. It's a tough situation to be in and it appears Gertrud, the star of, well, Gertrud, has decided to go for the quick option and just cut things off right away.

L'avventura Wrung Character-Centric Drama Out Of A "Gone Girl" Before It Was Cool!

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #18
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #21

Each of our individual identities gets heavily informed by the people around us. When we're impressionable children, the behavior and characteristics displayed by our parents to be inherited by the children they raise while the de facto traits needed to be one of the "popular" people in High School is likely going to be imitated by those looking to obtain some sort of higher social status. This is one of those universal psychological quirks of us as a species that show easily susceptible we can be in order to gain acceptance from our fellow peers. For the two individuals at the center of L'avventura, the entire dynamic they share is upended when a woman they're both dearly close to goes missing under mysterious circumstances.

Safety Last! Is The Sort Of Film That Puts A Grin On Your Face And Makes You Love Movies

Safety Last! is not just a movie I thoroughly enjoyed (to put it gently), but also one that cemented my feeling that the silent movie comedy is one of my cinematic subgenres. It's such an enjoyable corner of filmmaking, charming, humorous and showing a remarkable amount of craft on the part of the filmmakers and the actors who are working with a medium of storytelling that was still in its most nascent stage. Without sound or color by their side, the guys and gals behind these classic silent movie comedies managed to create wonders with the limited amount of tools at their disposal, demonstrating an incredible amount of artistic ingenuity.

Sea A Revolution Begin In Battleship Potemkin

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #17
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #11

Every revolution begins somewhere. Even the biggest uprisings in history have started with ideas from one human being, a singular mind that had had enough of the status quo and were looking to upend it for their own gain and for others. Sometimes these events end in prosperity, other times they esult in chaos. Either way though, these large interruptions come from humble origins as most things do. To quote the movie Lawrence Of Arabia, "Big things have small beginnings", and that's very much true for the rebellion seen in the 1925 Sergei Eisenstein motion picture, Battleship Potemkin, which recreates a real-life mutiny from twenty-three years prior.

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc Reveals The Humanity Of A Brave Historical Figure

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #13
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #9

As I've mentioned many times before how one of the best parts of Hamilton is the way it zeroes in on the humanity of larger than life historical figures. You get to fully understand the likes of George Washington, Aaron Burr (sir!) or Alexander Hamilton in a way that reminds you these were just human beings, like you or me, trapped in larger-than-life scenarios. Director Carl Theodore Dryer takes this same approach for his 1928 French film The Passion of Joan of Arc, which applies this style of storytelling to, as the title indicates, the real life figure of Joan of Arc, an individual with a story more than ripe for being told in the format of a feature film.