The Romance of Astrée and Celadon (2007, Eric Rohmer)
Astree loves Celadon and vice versa, with the kind of suicide-pact love that mainly exists among 17-year-olds in tragi-romantic plays. His parents don’t approve so the young lovers make a public show...
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Day of Reckoning (1990, Sam Fuller)
It’s Auteur Completism Month! I try to watch all the movies by my longtime favorite filmmakers – Fuller, Lang, Jarmusch, Cocteau, Maddin and so on – but sometimes a couple titles fall through the...
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Cold Lazarus (1996, Renny Rye)
An entry for… Initiated by Shadowplay A true “late film,” Cold Lazarus was the final script completed by Dennis Potter just weeks before his (and his wife’s!) death from cancer. He wrote it after his...
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Late Shorts
Another entry for… Initiated by Shadowplay It’s rare for late-career shorts to even exist. Filmmakers tend to “graduate” from shorts to features, never looking back, unless called to work on some...
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A Tale of Africa (1980, Susumu Hani & Simon Trevor)
Another entry for… Initiated by Shadowplay There’s classic Jimmy Stewart (The Philadelphia Story, Shop Around the Corner and those Capra flicks), mid-life Hitchcock/Preminger Jimmy Stewart, and the...
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Orson Welles: One-Man Band (1995, Vassili Silovic)
A catalog-style entry for… Initiated by Shadowplay Not just a late film, but a whole compendium of late films: a catalogue of works by Orson Welles during his last twenty years, assembled with stylish...
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The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell (1968, Frank Tashlin)
A belated entry for… Initiated by Shadowplay “This war’s gonna have a head on it” Frank Tashlin’s final film as director is a Bob Hope picture, appropriate since Hope gave Tashlin his big break into...
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Le petit théâtre de Jean Renoir (1970)
A very late entry for… Initiated by Shadowplay Le final film de Jean Renoir, made for television when the director was in his mid-70′s, eight years after his last theatrical picture The Elusive...
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A Tale of the Wind (1988, Joris Ivens & Marceline Loridan)
This was unexpectedly awesome. Between this, Regen and A Valparaiso, it’s time to consider adding Ivens to my list of favorite people. Sort of a Beaches of Joris, but less confessional to camera, shot...
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The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960, Fritz Lang)
Lang’s final film finds him back in Germany, making a cheap-looking b-movie callback to one of his largest silent features and his pioneering second sound film. Immediately following his Indian Epic,...
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Life of Riley (2014, Alain Resnais)
Resnais’s second movie in a row about a group of actors rallying around a dying friend. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet was a perfect final film, but Resnais was still alive and working, so he made another...
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Cosmos (2015, Andrzej Zulawski)
Two friends, spiky-haired Fuchs and moppy Witold, rent a room from Sabine Azéma (maintaining her manic energy from Wild Grass) and Jean-Francois Balmer (That Day, Chabrol’s Madame Bovary). They share...
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Night Across the Street (2012, Raoul Ruiz)
Time and history and fiction intermesh in a greenscreen theater. Don Celso aka Rhododendron is introduced in old age, then he meets Long John Silver in flashback, immediately putting us in classic Ruiz...
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No Home Movie (2015, Chantal Akerman)
From the Bressane straight into another movie opening with a long take, wind overloading the mic. Sometimes long static shots of empty rooms – but this one goes even further than the Bressane, if that...
View ArticleVarda by Agnès (2019, Agnès Varda)
A final film that works just as well as an introduction. On one hand, it’s mainly a career summary, and I didn’t need one. But I guess I did, because Jane B. looks different than I imagined it, and...
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