Finally, it is time. So far we have done eleven editions of Subtitle Subversive, but there was absolutely no way I was going to close out the first volume of a series about foreign film without one of the greatest directors in the world. Today we are going to talk about the one and only Werner Herzog and his masterpiece Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Aguirre is one of those films that is almost more famous for its behind the scenes madness than it was for the brilliance of the film itself. But make no mistake the finished product is…
Category: Subtitle Subversive
Subtitle Subversives-Solaris
If you looked at a Venn diagram of films I like and films I recognize to be great works of cinema the two circles would largely overlap. Sure there would be quite a few films I like that I recognize are not great cinema but there would only be a tiny sliver of films I recognize as being excellent pieces of filmmaking that I did not particularly enjoy. Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 masterwork Solaris is one of those rare films that falls into the latter category. Which is why I thought it would be perfect for this edition of Subtitle Subversives.…
Subtitle Subversive-Chungking Express
Most of the time when I’m going to sit down to watch a movie I have a general sense of what the movie is going to be about and what kind of mood it’s going to leave me in. Not that I cheat and look up what a movie is about before I see it but generally I’ve seen the film’s trailer somewhere or heard about it through a recommendation that gave me an impression of what to expect. Today’s Subtitle Subversive post is about a film which has been on my radar for a while that still managed to…
Subtitle Subversive- El ángel exterminador
Some films are straightforward. They have a plot, characters, scenery, and operate under a basic premise that what you see is what you get. Some films are not at all straightforward and require multiple viewing and an extensive amount of thinking after the fact to discern and interpret their true meanings or if the film had any meaning at all. Luis Buñuel’s El ángel exterminador certainly falls into the latter category. A surrealist indictment of Franco’s Spain, the movie is a masterclass of satire and a high watermark of Spanish cinema. Which is why I’ve made it the subject of…
Subtitle Subversive-The Time That Remains
It is not my habit to politicize the Film Follies section of this blog, I leave that to my Discourse of the Day posts, but some films are by their nature political and it would be irresponsible of me to pretend otherwise. This has been a bad year for Israeli-Palestinian relations, as most years are. Given the renewed tensions following Donald Trump’s reckless relocation of the American Embassy to Jerusalem I felt it was time to finally sit down and watch a movie that has been on my list since it came out almost ten years ago. In this edition…
Subtitle Subversive- The Seventh Seal
Cinema, like all the arts, serves many functions. Sometimes it is meant to help us escape. Sometimes its meant to give us hope. Sometimes its meant to expose an uncomfortable truth about the society in which we live. And sometimes its supposed to make us reflect on the nature of existence itself. In this edition of Subtitle Subversive, we’ll be taking a look at Ingmar Bergman’s Det Sjunde Inseglet or, as it is called in English, The Seventh Seal. One of Bergman’s seminal works, The Seventh Seal tells the tale of a knight as he returns home to Sweden after…
Subtitle Subversives- Memories of a Murder
South Korea is home to a thriving film industry, full of talented artists willing to take big risks in both plot mechanics and visual style in an effort to push the envelop and make their films resonate emotionally with their audiences. With this knowledge at the forefront of my mind, I sat down with great excitement to watch Memories of Murder. A film that has garnered a great deal of critical praise since its release in 2003. The film is based on the rape and murder of eleven young women that took place between 1986 and 1991 in a rural…
Subtitle Subversives-Intouchables
It is a fact of life that sometimes we set our expectations a little too high and, as a result, end up disappointed with something we might have been satisfied with if we’d gone in with no expectations at all. I have been waiting to watch this month’s entry of Subtitle Subversives for a while and was well aware of the numerous awards and top list considerations it had garnered. But while I don’t take the Subversive part of Subtitle Subversive too seriously, it is usually my goal to showcase movies here that set themselves apart from the formulaic Hollywood…
Subtitle Subversive- The Hidden Fortress
To wrap up our tribute to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens we take a look at the film that perhaps had the greatest influence on George Lucas when he was penning the original trilogy: Akira Kurosawa’s classic The Hidden Fortress. Released in 1957, The Hidden Fortress is another team up of famed samurai movie duo Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. It settles into place between Throne of Blood and Yojimbo on their joint filmography which is appropriate as this film is less of a sweeping epic than the former and less of a samurai film than the…
Subtitle Subversives- Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Given how many films I’ve watched, rated, and reviewed over the course of my life I think that it is not too much of a stretch to call myself a cinephile. Much too pretentious certainly but not too much of a stretch. I’m a fan of films that range from the golden age of the Hollywood studio system to underground Korean revenge epics. But one glaring hole in my knowledge base has always been Bollywood. The closest I’d gotten to an Indian produced film was Slumdog Millionaire which when I read it out loud sounds a bit racist. It’s not…