Continuing (after too long a gap!) my Beatles retrospective, I look at the curious case of Let It Be. Watching Let It Be (1970) today is an odd experience. The oddity lies not so much in the actual movie as the imbalance between the movie and the wealth of associated stories, supplementary materials, and interpretations …
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Seeing the World in Black and White: Shadow Review
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I look at the visually distinctive Shadow. Watching Shadow (2018), I was reminded of someone playing an elaborate game with dominoes. Like a domino master, Zhang Yimou and his co-screenwriter Li Wei set up their characters and plot through a long period of painstaking preparation, before they then start …
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Snapshots from the Eye of the Storm: Eight Days a Week and Beatles ’64 Review
Next in my Beatles retrospective, I look at two documentaries that get back to when the Fab Four first hit it big. Following the release of Yellow Submarine, the Beatles went on to participate in a documentary that ultimately became the film Let It Be. This would be the final film they participated in while …
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Dealing with Uninvited Guests: The Great Wall Review
The next entry in my Zhang Yimou retrospective poses the question: what happens when wuxia warriors face off against giant lizard monsters? Watch The Great Wall to find out! Five years after making The Flowers of War, his first film with a major Hollywood star, Zhang Yimou directed The Great Wall (2016), which featured not …
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Living Beneath the Waves: Yellow Submarine Review
Next in my Beatles retrospective, I turn to the dazzling Yellow Submarine. When I was a kid, my introduction to the Beatles came from two sources. The first was my older sister, who was a massive Beatles fan in her teenage years. Beyond owning many of the albums, she plastered her room in our house …
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Faithful unto Death: Coming Home Review
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I watch Coming Home Coming Home (2014), directed by Zhang Yimou and written by Zou Jingzhi, functions effectively as a thematic sequel to Zhang’s 2010 movie Under the Hawthorn Tree. Both movies focus on a romance: one between very young people in Under the Hawthorn Tree and one between …
Please Don’t Be Long, or I May Be Asleep: Magical Mystery Tour Review
Next in my Beatles retrospective comes Magical Mystery Tour, a less-than-successful episode in the band’s career. Sooner or later, like nemesis accomplishing her fateful designs, comes the moment that has been the downfall of many a pop culture titan: the TV holiday special. For the Beatles, the special in question was the Magical Mystery Tour, …
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Historical Fiction: The Flowers of War Review
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I look at The Flowers of War. Imagine one of the most wrenching scenes from Schindler’s List: the brutal sequence in which the Nazis forcibly round up the Jewish residents of the Krakow Ghetto, killing many of them. Now imagine that Steven Spielberg intercut that sequence with the Nepalese …
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Not So Self-Assured: Help! Review
My Beatles retrospective continues with my review of their second cinematic outing, which marks a bit of a sophomore slump. Help! (1965), directed by Richard Lester and written by Marc Behm and Charles Wood, was the second movie made as part of the Beatles three-picture deal with United Artists. Released one year after A Hard …
Watering the Tree of Revolution: Under the Hawthorn Tree Review
Continuing my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I consider the bittersweet Under the Hawthorn Tree. Like many other artists, Zhang Yimou has certain scenarios and themes he returns to again and again. He also likes reworking essentially the same story in different variants, sometimes improving on the previous version: as I mentioned before, his early movie Ju …
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The Cameraman 