Thatcherite influence can be spotted in the most surprising films.
In the meantime a New York cinephile sick of hibernating with Netflix and Criterion can set out for Lincoln Center, where Film Comment Selects, now in its 12th edition, has become an essential annual gathering of provocative, overlooked and surprising films, some of which also turn out to be pretty great.
John Ford, Hollywood's greatest political filmmaker, brings a surprising film-historical perspective to his underappreciated, rarely screened drama "Four Sons," from 1928.
Sometimes the near-great delineates the great in the way shadow does light, as John M. Stahl's surprisingly rare (and just plain surprising) film "When Tomorrow Comes" reminds us.
The titles with more recognition subsidize, in a way, a third tier, a slew of films culled from deep archives, oftentimes surprising film-makers themselves.
It is being hurried into theaters so quickly -- in part to beat "We Were Soldiers" -- that it has not been shown to test audiences, surprising film executives.
The most surprising film of the week was a six-minute animation by the Oscar-winner Richard Williams, a regular attendee at the Giornate.
Starring Pete Postlethwaite, it is a captivating and constantly surprising film: the first successful dramatisation of climate change to reach the big screen.
This strange, often thrilling, always surprising film — "Léon Morin, Priest" in English — was Melville's sixth feature and almost the exact midpoint between early successes like "Bob le Flambeur" (1956), about a gentleman thief organizing the heist of a lifetime, and "Army of Shadows" (1969), his late-career masterpiece about the Resistance.
It's not available here on DVD, and is shown rarely; it's a surprising film which, in subject and approach, blends Italian neo-realism and the visionary romanticism of F. W. Murnau (whose silent version of "Faust" would later be the subject of Rohmer's doctoral thesis).
Hoosiers is pretty fantastic, but I just think Breaking Away a better and more surprising film.
