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Feature Four Frames

Facing Mortality and Living Properly: Masaki Kobayashi’s The Fossil

The Fossil (Kaseki, 1975), based on a novel by Yasushi Inoue, is about the elderly businessman Itsuki (Shin Saburi), who is diagnosed with cancer while on a trip to Europe. The film was initially a television miniseries consisting of eight one-hour episodes because for Kobayashi and for many other directors, including Akira Kurosawa, the decline […]

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Fashion & Film Feature

Fashion & Film: Alain Delon in Plein soleil

René Clément was the first to adapt Patricia Highsmith’s book The Talented Mr. Ripley for the big screen. And he made it his own. Titled Plein soleil (1960), his gripping thriller – which focuses on the cruel, but cool Tom Ripley (Alain Delon), who ingeniously and skillfully finds ways to further his finances and lifestyle […]

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Emerging Writers Feature

Emerging Writers – On Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run

The Big Picture is committed to giving young, emerging writers a voice in the world of film criticism. In this feature, student writers from around the world share their insights on contemporary film and new releases.

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New Release Reviews

Blu-Ray Review: Smooth Talk (Criterion)

The sad news of Treat Williams’s recent death seems particularly poignant ahead of the Criterion Blu-ray release of Smooth Talk, which saw the actor play one of his more menacing roles as Arnold Friend opposite Laura Dern’s teen-tearaway Connie Wyatt.   The film, directed by Joyce Chopra and based on Joyce Carol Oates’s short story […]

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Director Debut Feature Four Frames

Creating a Cinematic Universe of His Own: Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me

In 1971, Clint Eastwood starred in three films, one of them being his directorial debut Play Misty for Me. The films in which he had previously starred were westerns or action films except for his role in a segment directed by Vittorio de Sica for the anthology film The Witches (Le Streghe, 1967). In Play […]

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Feature Four Frames

Sensationalism vs. truth: Akira Kurosawa’s Scandal

In Akira Kurosawa’s Scandal (Sukyandaru, aka Shubun, 1950), the aspiring painter Ichiro Aoye (Toshiro Mifune) and the famous opera singer Miyako Saijo (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) become victims of the gutter press, with a magazine claiming that the two young people are lovers. A surreptitiously taken photo showing them together at an inn in the countryside is […]

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Double Bill Feature

Double Bill: The Ring & Demonlover

Several decades into its inception, the internet is the most prominent form of mass media. While today social media brain rot is the social concern du jour, twenty years ago the sheer expanse of accessible information online was an idea met with skepticism and fear. This paranoia was examined most patently in two films from […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: Beau Is Afraid (Ari Aster, 2023)

In the closing moments of Ari Aster’s latest ‘elevated horror film’, our beleaguered hero Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix) is sat in a small motorboat – forcefully moored in a giant pool within a darkened stadium full of all the people he has ever known – having to defend his life against none other than his […]

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Fashion & Film Feature

Impossible Not to Think of Her: Catherine Deneuve in Mississippi Mermaid

Catherine Deneuve graces this year’s poster for the Cannes Film Festival and in its honour, we are revisiting François Truffaut’s La Sirène du Mississippi (1969). It was the first time when François Truffaut depicted a genuine couple. “In Jules and Jim and in The Soft Skin, scenes involving two people are always presented with reference […]