Tag / 1972

by Jaime Rebanal

The Other Side of the Underneath – Review

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What’s it feel like to be so overwhelmed by the outside world, and you can’t cope up with the way it moves? It isn’t an easy feeling to describe, and that’s what Jane Arden somehow managed to beautifully capture in The Other Side of the Underneath. Because there’s no real answer to describe why these people are exactly the way they are, the peculiarity of an experience much like The Other Side of the Underneath soon finds itself able to stand out. Being the only British feature from the 1970’s to be solely directed by a female, perhaps there’s another layer to the madness that The Other Side of the Underneath is depicting, since there’s really no other way to describe such a frenetic experience that could only have been told the way it is by its own era.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Godfather – Review

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I think trying to deconstruct what it is that I love about The Godfather so much is already its greatest challenge when so much of the praise that it receives is well-deserved. The Godfather is truly one of the greatest films ever made, but trying to type up my own praises was already hard enough when I already have an ingrained fear inside of my head that what I had to say would indeed just be the same as what’s already been said prior. But having the opportunity to see The Godfather in theaters only opened my eyes to something greater as a whole, because it had been less than half a year since the last time I revisited such a dense piece of work, and rather quickly I only found my own appreciation growing – finding so many smaller details catching my attention far more, to that point I can only join in and regurgitate what I know has already been said: The Godfather is truly one of the greatest films ever to have been made.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Cries and Whispers – Review

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I still remember my first exposure to the work of Ingmar Bergman very vividly: many would find themselves starting with one of his more well-known works like The Seventh Seal or Wild Strawberries but for me that introduction to a masterful body of work was Cries and Whispers. I still remember the look on my face as I was taken in with the horrors of his limited use of space, just as I was with the overcome present from his use of the colour red. As far as critical success is concerned, this may indeed be Ingmar Bergman’s most well-known on the count in spite of its polarizing of Swedish critics, it was the work that garnered Bergman his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director as well as a nomination for Best Picture. If this were supposedly “lesser Bergman” on some standards (I view it as one of his best), then it only reaffirms his stature as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Solaris – Review

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I still remember my first time watching Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris – for at the time I was 15 years old and trying to talk about a work of science fiction so meditative almost to the point it troubles the mind long after a viewing. Over these years and my rare revisits, I have only become even more intimidated to talk about the sort of film that Solaris ever was and quite possibly, I’m still struggling at the very moment to find words that do it justice because a quick label for it like “the greatest science fiction film ever made” wouldn’t seem as if it were enough to give it what it deserves. Andrei Tarkovsky, within his short career, has carried an incredible consistency that no other directors have held and Solaris stands atop all – for it still remains an ever so life-changing experience of all things.

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