How Had I Never Seen... "Splash"

by Cláudio Alves 

From time to time, there's talk of creating new Oscar categories. Just this year, Brad Pitt spoke about the need to give stunt coordinators some love and appreciation during his acceptance speech. Maybe he's right, maybe there should be a stunts category. Another arguably necessary addition is a casting award that reflects that job's importance in creating the movies we love – it's much more crucial than original songs, for instance. Casting is not just a matter of hiring good actors, but the challenge of getting the right people for the right roles. It's knowing how to capitalize on a star's persona and energy, the performer's fame, the tonal register they bring and the audience's perception of them. In the right circumstances, a limited actor can be a better choice than a consummate thespian with a greater range.

Ron Howard's delightful Splash (available on Disney+) is a pertinent example of the importance of good casting for a movie's success, humor, and dramatic functionality. With different performers, it probably wouldn't work half as well as it does…

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How Had I Never Seen... "Memories of Murder" and "The Host"

In this Team Experience series, contributors catch up with gaps in their film history. Here's Cláudio Alves...

With Parasite making history and Bong Joon-ho more celebrated than ever, it's a good time for me to watch the two films that propelled the Korean director to his first waves of international success. I had never seen 2003's Memories of Murder and 2006's The Host so I was eager to correct that. 

The first film is based upon real events, telling a story of police investigation and serial killing, while the second is a sort of South Korean answer to Godzilla's prismatic view of national trauma as monster movie hijinks. Not unexpectedly, I found myself in awe of both pictures…

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How had I never seen... "Rear Window"?

by Chris Feil

Rear Window has to be one of the more embarrassing blind spots to have among the entirety of Alfred Hitchcock’s repertoire or as a Jimmy Stewart lover, but alas I had it. I know, I know.

Maybe the best thing I can chalk it up to is something that’s been in the ether of my lifelong Hitchcock consumption that’s kept me from the Happy Ending Hitchcocks. Things like To Catch A Thief stayed out of my orbit until adulthood without the veneer of morbidity to entice them to a young horrorhound. And rest assured that Rear Window ends as quaintly, if subversively sly, as any of his films. But like me telling myself I’ll eventually catch up to the film, Rear Window is itself about things we put off and avoid. It’s a movie about a man trying so hard to avoid commitment that he gets himself invested in a murder.

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How had I never seen...“While You Were Sleeping”?

by Cláudio Alves

Some films prove their greatness by challenging the audience. Some engage the mind, others spellbind the senses, immersing those who watch them in formalistic dreams of celluloid and digital beauty. Abrasive, cerebral, immersive, cinema can be a wonder, but we shouldn't suppose there's a single path to cinematic glory.

Don't get me wrong, I love my slow cinema, my European art-house hits, and Philosophical reveries. To cry with Carol is magic, to wander through Stalker's desolation is like dreaming with open eyes and to see New York, New York is to applaud its spectacle of ambition. But a cinephile can yearn for simple pleasures, too. Sometimes, one just wants to forget life's troubles and escape, to enjoy the goofiness of a nice comedy or the sweetness of an impossible romance. Sometimes, one just needs a hug.

And I've only just discovered that While You Were Sleeping (1995) fulfills that need with the warmest of embraces…

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How had I never seen... "Farewell My Concubine" (1993)

In this new series, members of Team Film Experience watch and share their reactions to classic films they’ve never seen. 

by Tim Brayton

I wish there was a good reason why it took me 26 years to catch up with Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, co-winner of the 1993 Palme d'Or, two-time Oscar nominee for Best Cinematography and Best Foreign-Language Film, and the film that did more than probably any other single title to present Chinese art cinema to international audiences in the 1990s. Instead, I only have a very terrible reason: it's 171 minutes long, and I never quite managed to make it my top priority in those moments when I had three uninterrupted hours.

To the surprise of nobody, including myself, that turns out to have been a terrible mistake. As long as the film is – and I'd be fibbing if I said that I never once felt that running time – it's unquestionably filling every last one of those minutes with a whole lot of immensely appealing stuff. That Best Cinematography nomination wasn't for show: this is an unbelievably lavish epic of 20th Century history, surely one of the most gorgeous motion pictures of its decade...

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