Category: Film
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The Reel Argument: Andrei Tarkovsky
By Bergotte Andrei Tarkovsky is the filmmaker most often recommended and least often watched, and the reason for this is a lie — a well-intentioned, widely repeated lie that has done more damage to his reputation than any honest criticism could. The lie is that his films are difficult. They are not difficult. They are…
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Tim Curry, 1946–2026
The man who made wickedness irresistible Tim Curry, who has died aged 80, was one of those rare actors whose presence could transform a film before he had even spoken. He possessed a voice that seemed to have been dipped in velvet and sharpened at the edges, an extraordinary physicality, and an appetite for the…
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We Will Always Love You, Dolly
By Bergotte Dolly Rebecca Parton, January 19, 1946 — August 25, 2026 Dolly Parton died yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee, after a brief battle with cancer. She was eighty years old. Sixteen months earlier, she had lost Carl Dean, her husband of nearly six decades, and she had said openly that she had not taken care…
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The Reel Argument: Carl Theodor Dreyer
By Bergotte There is a filmmaker most people have never seen whose work contains some of the most powerful images in the history of cinema, and his name is Carl Theodor Dreyer. He made fewer than a dozen surviving features across forty years, worked in almost complete opposition to every commercial instinct the film industry…
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Who Are You at the Dinner Table? The Invite — Review
Director: Olivia WildeScreenplay: Rashida Jones and Will McCormackStarring: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, Edward NortonYear: 2026Country: United StatesGenre: Comedy-drama / chamber comedyRunning time: 107 minutesBased on: Cesc Gay’s Sentimental (2020), released internationally as The People UpstairsRating: ★★★★☆ What It Is Joe and Angela are a long-married San Francisco couple whose relationship has calcified into…
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The Reel Argument: Ingmar Bergman
By Bergotte Ingmar Bergman made films about the things we cannot say to each other, and he made them with a directness that is almost unbearable. He is routinely described as a difficult filmmaker — demanding, austere, heavy — and this reputation has kept more people from him than it has drawn in, which is…
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Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
Director: Sasha WatersTitle: Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the WorldYear: 2026Country: United StatesGenre: Documentary / BiographyRunning time: 91 minutesRating: ★★★★☆ What It Is Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World is Sasha Waters’s documentary portrait of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Mary Oliver, whose deceptively simple poems about nature, solitude, mortality,…
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Hans Christian Andersen: The Story of a Mother
Grief, Sacrifice, and the Limits of Maternal Love: Jørgen Vestergaard’s Historien om en moder (1977) By Bergotte The Story of a Mother Here is a film that is seared into my memory from childhood: Jørgen Vestergaard’s 1977 Danish stop-motion animated short Historien om en moder (The Story of a Mother) represents one of the most…
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Eddie Murphy
Essay · Comedy & Culture The Force That Arrived at Nineteen Eddie Murphy is the most naturally gifted comedian America has produced in the second half of the twentieth century, and the case for this claim is not primarily about the films, though the films at their best are extraordinary, and not primarily about the…
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Natalie Wood
Essay · Film & Lives The Girl Who Never Quite Belonged to Herself Natalie Wood was one of the most naturally gifted actresses of the Hollywood studio era, a woman who made the transition from child star to adult performer with a completeness that almost no one manages, who received three Academy Award nominations before…
