Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) ****

Writer/Director: George Lucas

Year: 1977

Cinematographer: Gilbert Taylor

Its been many years since the last time I saw this classic, and I'm not as impressed by the filmmaking as I was when I was younger. However, the sound design really blew me away, and I appreciated how the script flowed, although Lucas' later CGI inserts slow it down and distract from the story. I found myself surprised by how funny the story is, with great comic relief coming from C3P0 and R2D2 especially. I don't remember seeing that comedy in the newer episodes 1-3. I enjoyed the special effects, because they are so far from being realistic I was actually left to enjoy the story as a movie experience, I really must emphasize how much I prefer the in camera affects (like of the space ships flying over head being shots of models) over the CGI animation affects of today. Its a fun movie, I wonder if there is a DVD version out there without the newly added CGI animals and stuff, oh, and the Jabba the Hut scene that was added, I really found the CGI animation distracting there.

Still, it was good fun and I am now pumped about rediscovering The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi with Ingrid, who has never seen any of the films and was asking me after the movie ended if Princess Leia would end up with Luke or Han Solo. Its cool to experience it with someone who is seeing it with totally fresh eyes and hasn't had the surprises ruined... she apparently doesn't know about "Luke, I am your father!"

The characters really do draw you in, and when you imagine seeing Darth Vader for the first time, he's a really impacting villain, obviously he's totally unforgettable, but I had a nice experience with the ubiquitous movie because I hadn't visited it's fantasy world in so long. I totally got sucked up all over again by the wonder of space travel.

The Matrix ?

Writer/Directors: Andy and Lana Wachowski

Year: 1999

Cinematographer: Bill Pope

Casino Royale ***

Director: Martin Campbell

Year: 2006

Book by: Ian Fleming

Adapted by: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis

Cinematographer: Phil Meheux

Shortbus **

Writer/Director: John Cameron Mitchell

Year: 2006

Cinematographer: Frank G. DeMarco

Caution: this film contains nearly pornographic material. I do not recommend it to anyone sensitive to seeing real sex acts played out as part of the film. I argue it does not cross the line into pornography because the scenes are not meant to be titilating, they are meant to depict the sexual adventures of very real humans and the pains and hurts and insecurities they have. The director does work to create some realistic characters, and I like that he doesn't choose sexy people or make the scenes glossy and cinematic, more or less he wants the audience to see and experience open sexuality with an honest look... and that is where my criticism lies.

I am not going to give a film a poor rating for high sex content, although some scenes really made me uncomfortable, I trusted the director to prove to me that he had something relevant to say through those scenes. And ultimately, I believe he failed. The character arcs are not complete or compelling enough for me, and the acting is okay, but far from being solid all the way around, and I don't think he achieved his own purpose... to show sexuality as it really is, with all of its insecurity, unintended humor, and negative affects, along with the love and passion of it. The film doesn't justify itself for me, and I am mature enough to be neither shocked by it nor to celebrate just for being "edgy". I believe someone could take this premise and do it better, basically, and that is why I criticize it.

Someone might say, well he intended it to be a comedy, but to that I say, it was neither absurd nor funny enough to be a comedy. Tonally, it has some overly melodramatic moments (which may have been intended to be funny, but just seemed sloppily written and acted) and some serious dramatic moments. The serious drama doesn't ring true either at all times, with characters not earning their big dramatic moments.

Not worth the time.

The Man Who Wasn't There ****

Writer/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Year: 2001

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins

Another very good film from the Coen Brothers, actually my first time to see this one, meaning that the only two left of theirs that I've not seen are The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, which by most accounts are their worst pieces.

Billy Bob Thorton's character Ed the barber doesn't do much, he doesn't react much, but the one time he gets a chance to stop being "the barber" a role that he hates, he cooly uses blackmail to try to get ahead... which sets into motion a series of tragic and confusing events, both darkly comic and profound while being absurd at the same time. Its a bit surreal at times, and I loved how I never knew where the next scene was going to take me. It is told like a film noir in the stark black and white high contrast, with first person past tense narration, and tells the tragedy of a man who commits murder almost by accident, as his original crime spins out of control.

The Coen Brothers love doing this to their poor characters, they try to get ahead, to cut the corners by committing a small crime, but it inevitably gets out of hand, snow balling due to their lack of real understanding of all the angles, or inability to control all the variable factors that hold influence over the fate of their "plan". And as a consequence of poor planning, or just plain stupid decisions, the scheming character suffers greatly along with his loved ones. Also, fate is a totally incontrollable force, and good and bad luck variably bring the character ups and downs, usually downs.

The Damned United ****

Director: Tom Hooper

Year: 2009

Book by: David Peace (The Damned UTD)

Adapted by: Peter Morgan

Cinematographer: Ben Smithard

Michael Sheen gives a great performance as Brian Clough (should have been nominated for best male actor at the Oscars), and Colm Meaney, Timothy Spall, and Jim Broadbent all give very good performances.

This sports film does well by not being predictable. I thought it would be about a coach who comes in to a team as underdog and then brings them to climactic victory for one great underdog season, like most sports movies that focus on the coach... but no, this is a much more interesting character study, and Michael Sheen brings more depth to his character than I have ever seen in a coach character in a film before. The director and screenwriter do well to portray him as a complex man, and to focus on his personal rivalry with Don Revie and close friendship/partnership with Peter Taylor... which plays out like a troubled old married couple in the film.

The personal dynamics are what make the film so engaging, the photography is solid and there are just enough original touches to the shot selections to keep it from blending in with all the other sport films out there. As a football double feature, you should see this along with Carlos Cuarón's "Rudo y Cursi" another soccer film that focuses correctly on the drama off the soccer pitch rather than the typical focus on winning "the big game."

The Young Victoria ***

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Year: 2009

Writer: Julian Fellowes

Cinematographer: Hagen Bogdanski

City of God *****

Original title: Cidade de Deus

Directors: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund

Year: 2002

Book by: Paulo Lins

Adapted by: Bráulio Mantovani

Cinematographer: César Charlone

Opens on a chicken which escapes the slaughter, and a group of young violent criminals chases it down, through the slum... the chicken leads the band of gangsters to the one character in the film trying to escape the violence of the slums by choosing to become a photographer. He decides to shoot pictures rather than guns.

Impressive screenplay, direction and acting, especially considering the kids really come from the slums of Rio. Cinematography is masterful.

Grizzly Man *****

Director: Werner Herzog

Year: 2005

There is no better director to handle the story of Timothy Treadwell, a man who's obsession with bears and hatred for the human world drove him to the illusion that he had conquered the world of the bears and earned his own place among them... he was wrong, nature is harsh and cruel, it does not make friends with humans, in the end a bear took Treadwell's life and ate his corpse.

This is virtually every theme found in the great films of Werner Herzog's career... men obsessed with conquering some aspect of nature, of carving out their own place as king of nature... but who are deeply mistaken. The mystique and allure of nature can not be tamed or controlled or managed by humanity. As Herzog says in his narration, his experience has shown that chaos rules in the natural world. He who mistakes nature's power will be among the first of its victims, and mad men will be conquered and destroyed by nature just as they think they have conquered nature. Nature always gets the last word in Herzog's work, like "Aguirre: The Wrath of God".

Los abrazos rotos ****

(Broken Embraces)

Writer/Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Year: 2009

Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto

Reminds me of Fellini's 8 1/2 without being too direct. Really enjoyed this film, Almodóvar tells a story with depth... rich in emotion and color.

Luscious to see, and all the hype the critics and press have built up about Penélope Cruz is well deserved, this is likely to go down as a classic just for her presence in this film, the way Almodóvar's direction and Prieto's photography allow her to be the biggest bombshell she's ever been, at least as far as I've seen... she's on par here with Bridget Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, or Monica Vitti from Antonioni's "L'avventura."

Yet for some reason, I was left unaffected... maybe its my fault because I saw it broken up with a few pauses, so the emotional flow of the film was lost on me... anyhow, I give it 4 stars because I wasn't blown away by the film, but who knows... I wasn't initially blown away by Fellini's "La Dulce Vita". Could be a 5 star film for me next time I see it.

Anyway, worth your time most assuredly.

Mar adentro ****

(The Sea Inside)

Director: Alejandro Amenábar

Year: 2004

Writers: Alejandro Amenábar, Mateo Gil

Cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe

A good film, exceptional for its treatment of the subject matter, but never jumps off the screen to blow me away... "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" covers some similar material while managing to be more emotionally grabbing and far more visual interesting, which is why that film gets the full 5 stars.

Brick ****

Writer/Director: Rian Johnson

Year: 2005

Cinematographer: Steve Yedlin

Rian Johnson does two things at once in this movie: first, he shows his knowledge of the detective genre by using many Film Noir tropes, and weaves the complicated plot full of femme fatals, shady drug dealers and their unpredictable muscle for hire, a murder mystery being solved by the wounded loner investigator who suffers from a broken heart and mistrust of women.

But the second thing Johnson is doing is portraying the world of the modern wealthy high school full of kids who think they are something that they can't be because they lack the life experience to be who they think they are, though they are smart and talented. He captures that heightened reality of emotions that high school is full of, but instead of making the kids out to be melodramatic for no reason... he goes with it, in fact he justifies the drama by giving them this murder mystery entwined with drugs and sexual betrayal. But not just the realistic drug and sex and violence problems that a contemporary high schooler might encounter, but heightened all the way up to Film Noir levels of melodrama, complete with the witty, fast-talking dialogue.

You've got to roll with that artistic decision, to put high schoolers in a Film Noir, or else it will just annoy you. He manages to let the film be funny at times, with moments of absurdity showing up where we might expect for their to be holes in the plans of a pampered high school kid from a wealthy southern california community trying to play detective or drug kingpin... but ultimately he takes the story seriously, and the final body count adds up to 6.

It's an interesting idea, and I think you certainly can find high schools in the US with these dynamics at play, but it doesn't mean it's easy to follow a hard-boiled down-and-out detective who's only what? 17-years-old? Of course, in the eyes of a 17-year-old, he may think of himself as hard-boiled because he still has no clue of how much more hard stuff life has got waiting for him... then again, the story justifies the kid's feelings by taking away the "love of his life"... certainly something a 17 year old would feel for his first ex-girlfriend with all the over-passionate melodrama of young love.

So in the end I'm torn, the movie works on some level, if you take it as an interesting exercise in taking both the real and imagined drama of high school, and further heightening the stakes to Film Noir levels... but if it just seems ridiculous to hear such witty, encoded dialogue coming from kids this age, then you'll be further distracted by the moments when the acting doesn't deliver the lines with the gravity that an adult actor can bring, for example, when Joseph Gordon-Levitt says, "oh put that body to bed..." A line that just rang in my head as a sour note, annoying me for the entire film because it was delivered like a kid doing an impression of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown... but maybe that's who that character is... a kid who has read one too many Dick Tracy stories, but then again, if the character is doing impression of film noir (and it's plausible that a kid in Southern California knows about film noir) then why is there no reference to that? And why do all the other characters seem to be in the role play too?

No, I guess Johnson wasn't really trying to get at the idea of young kids playing out filmic fantasies... I think the filmic fantasy is a personal one for Johnson. Judging by his other work, The Brothers Bloom, I'd say thats a safe bet. Both films have young kids playing out genre film plots that are beyond realistic... I think it's Rian who is such a film geek that maybe he always played pretend as a kid that he was living out the plot of a con man or hard-boiled detective from the movies, and its Johnson who's thorough understanding of genre tropes allows him to methodically include them in the very stories his characters are role-playing in.

It falls emotionally flat for me, I would rather see a straight con or detective film rather than see young characters trying to be the stereotypes of con men or detectives that those same characters might have seen in the movies that Rian Johnson has been watching.

So for falling emotionally flat and a few poorly delivered lines, it can't get 5 stars, but it is very original and interesting, and the writing/directing deserve credit for being outside of the box in a good way... so yeah, go see it.

The Big Lebowski *****

Writer/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Year: 1998

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins

A fun comedy, another masterpiece by the Coen Brothers, Jeff Bridges should have won best actor for this role.

Los bastardos **

(The Basterds)

Director: Amat Escalante

Year: 2008

Writers: Amat and Martín Escalante

Cinematographer: Matthew Uhry

I felt like the script was written in spanish and poorly translated to english for the english speaking actors, especially bad script for the Karen character played by Nina Zavarin, who did not pull off her character at all. I don't know how much to blame the actor, the script, or the director for that, but I was very distracted at times by certain word choices that don't seem natural for a native english speaker.

The style of long slow takes works alright for me, seemingly taking from directors like the Dardenne Brothers or Michael Haneke, but the problem you face with a slowly edited film with few shots is that you expose your choices as director to deeper scrutiny because you are making so few of them, you must show a lot of confidence in each angle, each bit of information in the frame and each actor's performance. The actors really have to deliver on the realism in this style of film, and here, they didn't.

Still, I liked the premise. I would be interested to see more work from this director, hopefully he can perfect this style of filmmaking so that he can pull off this kind of story.

If you want to see masterpieces of a similar tone see: Michael Haneke's "Caché" or "The Son" by the Dardenne Brothers.

Memento ****

Director: Christopher Nolan

Year: 2000

Short story by: Jonathan Nolan

Adapted by: Christopher Nolan

Cinematographer: Wally Pfister

Children of Men *****

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Year: 2006

Book by: P.D. James "The Children of Men"

Adapted by: Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki

For me, maybe the crowning cinematic achievement so far in sci-fi films dealing with possible future social scenarios of severe political oppression. It achieves this by commenting on current issues like immigration without making those issues the foreground of the film. Cuarón is wise enough to make the film about the characters' journey in the context of this fictional future world situation, and the backdrop becomes a sharp social-political critique maybe, but certainly a reasonable prediction based on current realities. Set and production design here is the best of any film set in the future. No we don't know what the future will be like, but I think the guess-work here is more thorough and believable than the traditionally great films of "Bladerunner" or "1984". The film resonates with the audience more deeply because of its reasonable philosophical analysis of the way humans are, and the way our organizations think and act, including government, police, refugee groups, and activist groups.

The profoundly orchestrated long takes and careful use of special effects and CGI all contribute to a perfectly painted portrait precisely because those things which technology allows the filmmaker to paint are not distracting from the overall picture. Cuarón unlike filmmakers like James Cameron, knows how to integrate technology to help him achieve greater art and more deeply impactful cinema. Storytelling is the end, technology a means... not the other way round.

Rewatching it, I remembered the thrill I got from seeing it the first time in the theater, it really should be remembered as one of the best films of the '00s and probably as the greatest film set in "the future."

Collateral *****

Director: Michael Mann

Year: 2004

Writer: Stuart Beattie

Cinematographer: Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron

Michael Mann's directorial masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. The script is good, but needed great directing to pull it off so well. Great photography, well-acted, one of my favorite action films, because like my favorite action film series, the "Bourne" trilogy, you have well-directed action along with truly interesting character development.

I really enjoy any film that lets a location be a character, and here, Mann lets LA be more than the setting... its lights live and breathe, and its nocturnal characters playing out a great cat and mouse crime thriller, with an unwitting cab driver caught in the middle and forced to finally break his routine.

Great sound design and music choices/scoring as well... a very sharp film, one of my favorites because I can always return to it and enjoy it as a good ride.

Elephant *****

Writer/Director: Gus Van Sant

Year: 2003

Cinematographer: Harris Savides

Fargo *****

Writer/Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Year: 1996

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins

Classic, won best director award at Cannes, and for good reason.

This is the Coen Bros. masterpiece. They have a great filmography, don't get me wrong, and they have other masterpieces, like No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, and The Big Lebowski... but in my opinion, this is their towering work.

Maybe you have to have lived in Minnesota as I did for 7 years growing up to understand just how accurate the feel of the location is here, the depictions of the characters... its just spot on. My father swears that the Hardees by the airport never responds when you go through the drive-thru... Marge goes through that very drive-thru and sits there yelling "HELLOOOO".

Its a great story, and the idea of claiming it to be a true story is genius, adding to the shock experienced by the audience. Unforgettable moments (kidnapping scene fall down the stairs with shower curtain), great dialogue (basically the whole script) and nice little asides to the story that fill in the characters and locations like Marge's interaction with Mike.

I'm feeling a bit lazy in my writing today, so while I'm not giving the best critique, if you haven't seen Fargo, you just have to.

Love the eeriness of the white minnesota landscapes, and the depiction of Minnesotan people and "Minnesota Nice".

Superb dialogue. Great acting. Love the character of Marge the pregnant police chief who can't understand why people would be so violent for "just a little bit of money."

Vicky Christina Barcelona ****

Writer/Director: Woody Allen

Year: 2008

Cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe

There Will Be Blood *****

Writer/Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Year: 2007

Cinematographer: Robert Elswit

Original music: Jonny Greenwood

Inspired by Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" and production design stolen from early photographs, PT Anderson cooks up a quintessentially American story.

Swindling capitalists and swindling evangelical preachers, two powerful groups who maintain great wealth and influence in our society... the two wings of the conservative party.

The capitalists must be friends with the religious, or else the religious won't let the capitalists take financial control, but the religious leaders need the capitalists as friends if they want to make any money. So the two swindle each other while they both swindle the masses, one reaps personal wealth and the other power over the doors to heaven and hell.

They look like friends in front of the masses, the capitalists and the preachers, because they both know they need each other to get rich... but behind closed doors... maybe they are the worst of enemies because when their greed clashes, what determines who will get away with the wealth and power? PT Anderson shows us that when these two greedy swindlers clash, "there will be blood."

Note the name H.W., Plainview's son... reminds me of George H.W. Bush.

And note the name of the preacher, Eli Sunday. Reminds me of Billy Sunday, the most famous evangelical preacher of the early 20th century.

Note that young H.W. seems to be baptized in oil near the beginning of the film by his real father, just one scene before his tragic death.

Daniel Day-Lewis gives one of the top 5 performances of all-time as Daniel Plainview the oilman.

Script is incredible, not only for the depth of relevance it gives us just below the surface between the two great manipulative forces in American society, but for dialogue that you just can't forget, especially when delivered so forcefully by Daniel Day-Lewis. Also, I think the script is heads and shoulders above other films of our era because of the information it leaves out. Leaving us to speculate, we the audience are not fed details that aren't important, if you can't glean the significance of certain pieces of the visual story telling, then you need to start looking harder at film and use your brain to analyse, to ask questions while you watch the film and think for yourself why characters might be motivated to..., or how they know... You've got to watch, and you've got to engage the film on its own terms, and thats exactly how cinema should be.

The camera moves ominously, and the music adds layers of genuine tension that almost drive the audience mad. Incredible original music score by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead.

Perfect cinematography by Robert Elswit, I love big cinematic stuff, and the oil rig blast and subsequent fire are magnificent.

Can't believe I waited so long to see it a second time. I look forward to engaging with it again, and hopefully getting my hands on a DVD with a lot of behind the scenes features.

A new classic, a must see.

Kramer vs. Kramer ****

Director: Robert Benton

Year: 1979

Book by: Avery Corman

Adapted by: Robert Benton

Cinematographer: Néstor Almendros

A great film, tough to watch. Definitely sits in that part of cinema referred to as "new hollywood" because although filmed in NYC, major hollywood actors Hoffman and Streep play in a film about divorce that is unflinching and not comical. Subject matter that wouldn't have been touched before in hollywood.

Here is the most genuine depiction of a divorce and custody battle that I've ever seen. The audience can't figure out to side with the mother who up and left the family who now realizes it was a mistake and wants custody or the father who was initially a workaholic, emotionally disconnected father and husband who at a couple of points loses his temper irrationally with a little boy, but who learns to sacrifice career for family, making the boy number one priority in his life and also fighting to keep custody of the child he has been raising as a single dad for the last 18 months.

Both parents are flawed, real characters, who truly love their son... and perhaps the cruelty of the lawyers attacking them on the stand is the one thing that can teach them to have mercy on each other, maybe even take another chance.

Excellently written, directed and acted. Love the scene of the morning after Streep leaves, and Hoffman and the kid are cooking french toast together as it builds to a fever pitch of tension and anger... when finally Hoffman burns his hand on the pan, throwing it to the ground and screaming out briefly. Classic American cinema.

If only current hollywood dramas could learn a bit about the genuine and full character development displayed in this picture.

American Hardcore ***

Director: Paul Rachman

Year: 2006

Book by: Steven Blush

A documentary explaining the history of the american hardcore punk rock scene from 1980 to 1986. Well done, uses various archive video taken from live shows, often using the original poor sound quality which adds to the realism of the documentary. Doesn't glamorize it too much, although some of the musicians (now mid-life) talk about it like the good old days, the doc seems like a fairly objective overview of the scene and its cultural context, while zooming in on a hand full of bands credited with being the most important to the growth of the scene... Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Minor Threat being the big four. I personally don't know much about this early 80's hardcore, but as a music fan and bit of a hobby musicologist, I feel like I got a thorough 101 course, and although personally don't feel an especially strong connection with this extremely angry branch of the rock and roll family tree, I will be hunting down some of the key bands music and trying to learn more. This is exactly what I want from a music documentary, to educate me about the context of the scene and the dynamics of the bands involved with the movement, and to give me a chance to find new music.

Well done, but not a radically revealing film, nor does it cinematically rise above a sort of a visual musicology essay. Also, unless you either like hardcore music or can appreciate it, I don't think you'll want to sit through it. For that it sits as a good movie, and if you are drawn to the subject matter I absolutely suggest it, but if you don't like it, I wouldn't steer you towards it.

More academic ultimately than a documentary like Anvil: The Story of Anvil! which, although following a has-been metal band, you don't have to be a metal head to enjoy. That film is a human story, and therefore cinematic, and a film I would just as easily suggest to a metal music fan as I would someone who prefers easy listening.

Wall-E *****

Director: Andrew Stanton

Year: 2008

Writers: Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Jim Reardon

First 20 minutes are the best post-armageddon film I've seen, Wall-E the robot is like Charlie Chaplin's little tramp character, wandering through the mountains of polluted junk and collecting artifacts of the ancient human culture like a silent film. He collects and appreciates the artifacts of our culture, even if he can't imagine what a bra, a zippo lighter, or spork might be used for, though it doesn't matter, just like the movies he watches on his i-pod magnified through a giant magnifying glass, because they inspire him, and like A.I., the robot longs to be human it seems.

The film also draws on the sci-fi traditions of 2001: A Space Odessy, Blade Runner, THX-1138, Star Wars, and Star Trek. But though it draws obvious visual and thematic connections to these films, it never gets weighed down by refrences, and makes its own unique love story and socially critical sci-fi warning to humanity. Wall-E is not just a robot falling in love with another, slicker, Mac looking robot, EVE, with her sleek white design, but rather it is the love story of a robot who loves human culture and even if unwittingly, saves that very human culture despite its grotesqueness. Wall-E the robot and the film itself have hope in humanity, as personified by the Captain of the space ship Axiom... although we are fat and lazy, sitting in our recliners eating what the megacorporations feed us, and ignoring real life while passing it all staring at a computer screen, and polluting our own planet until it is unsustainable for life... we can turn the ship around, we can protect our home planet and learn to be sustainable so that the beauty of our culture, and the phenomenon of love, which is what makes us human, can continue for many more generations to come.

Excellent film, visually cinematic, with shallow depth of field, focus rolling, and even a hand-held feel to the camera positions at times, the film feels like the shots were selected by a real cinematographer who walked around in the landscape looking for the angles.

Animated story-telling has never been more fully cinematic, a social satire, the core of good sci-fi, and a touching love story all work together to make this one of the best film releases of 2008.

Man with the Movie Camera ****

Director: Dziga Vertov

Year: 1929

A man carries a camera around filming various aspects of daily life in his city in the Soviet Union, Vertov seems to be one of the first to fully explore the basic visual effects available to a filmmaker via the filming itself and especially by experimenting with the editing of film.

Important film to see if you are a film fan, as you get a sense of just how early filmmakers were exploring the possibilities of the medium. Vertov not only experiments with angles, handheld, moving camera techniques, over and undercranking, but then with editing. In fact, the film shows us his experimentation and the process of editing, visually drawing comparisons between the lens of a camera with shades of a window and the eye and its eye-lids, and editing with textile weaving.