Tag / 1960

by Jaime Rebanal

The Apartment – Review

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I’m an especially reclusive person. I don’t even know if I’ve ever managed to have a social life the way I wanted because, to say the least, I’ve lived my life as a hermit. I think this is a fairly known fact about me, and it isn’t surprising about the sort of person that I am, I’ve been living a lonely person. I’ve never been a particularly good communicator. I’m already nearing my 19th birthday as I’m writing this and I’m only getting unhappier about it by the minute because I’m about to start college later this year and I don’t even know if I’m ready for it. To say the least, if any other film ever managed to get down to the bone of what that experience was like for myself, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment has always been a perfect go-to. On one end, we see the comedies that remind us of the happiness of our lives, and what it looks like on a shallow surface. But what’s made The Apartment the pinnacle of Billy Wilder’s directorial career goes beyond what it looks like, because it’s already left me a mess thinking about how I live my own life.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Jigoku – Review

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This is my first experience watching a film by Nobuo Nakagawa, and I’m already enamored with what I witnessed. For one it is easy to commend something like Jigoku (or The Sinners of Hell in some areas) aspires to be, especially given the image that is known to define Japanese horror – for with Jigoku we have something that changes around the most recognizable factors and instead becomes an experience of its own kind altogether. With Jigoku, what Nobuo Nakagawa has managed to create is not only one of the most frightening of all depictions of Hell to be put on film, but also one of the best films to representative of its own time period and in the best sense. Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

La Dolce Vita – Review

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La Dolce Vita, or, “the sweet life,” is the kind of film that goes to remind a person like myself what is the life we wish to find at one point – the kind of lifestyle any normal being would desire. Federico Fellini’s wonderful film, his magnum opus for the matter, remains one of those films that always surprises me every time I come back, for there’s an overwhelming sense of awe and wonder left behind on every visit. It truly is Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, one can not simply get any better than La Dolce Vita. The only one that can come close to rivaling such beauty would be Fellini’s own 8½, but even with that said, both are examples of creativity exploding at some of its very most especially amongst all of cinema. Continue reading →