The Shining

Dir. Stanley Kubrick
1980

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Happy Halloween everyone!

Michael Clayton

Dir. Tony Gilroy
2007

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Inglourious Basterds

Dir. Quentin Tarantino
2009

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"I think this just might be my masterpiece."

The Big Lebowski

Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen
1998

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The Woman in the Window

Dir. Fritz Lang
1945

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Collateral

Dir. Michael Mann
2004

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A Serious Man

Dir. Joel and Ethan Cohen
2009

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"Accept the mystery," says the parent of a student trying to bribe the beleaguered teacher, Larry Gopnik. Larry struggles to find meaning to find a reason behind all his troubles: his divorce, his troubled brother, his lack of answers from his spiritual leaders. The Cohens open and close their film with images of weather, symbolizing the lack of ability humans really have to control their own destiny. Why, really, does snow fall, or tornados whirl? Does it have to do with the actions of the mortals on this planet? Is it punishment from a divine being or simply pressure systems? Ultimately, the answer is unknowable.

Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone

Dir. Chris Columbus
2001

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We start the seven year, 8-film journey charting Harry Potter's development from neglected, underfed, friendless and underprivileged to his ascension as a knowledgable, capable and person-of-import here, looking up into a bleak night sky with a sign announcing the plainness of his origins. It's always there, in the back of Harry's (and by extension, the audience's mind), that Harry came from an ordinary (and, in many respects quite unhealthy) place; and it's somewhere he could always slide back into. Indeed, each film begins with him again back at Privet drive. But, inside this opening image is embedded a clue to his potential, a magical owl; a person in animal form who is looking out for him. Indeed, in the final shot the angle has changed; we are above the clatter of the world and looking straight at the distant magical castle. We are inspired to dream as Harry dreams: that no matter our origins and previous traumas and no matter our tendency to return to them, we have a greater potential, and, perhaps, we have loved ones looking out after us.

The Hunt for Red October

Dir. John McTiernan
1990

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"It's cold this morning," the XO remarks to the Captain. The captain agrees. "Cold, and hard." We see the cold and feel the harsh reality of the environment in this opening shot, symbolically standing in for the cold and hard regime under which the XO and Captain live; a regime from which they are planning to defect. At the end we see a teddy bear, purchased to accompany Jack Ryan's daughter's existing bear, showing he is close to returning to domestic tranquility. But the bear too points us to the comfort that the Captain now feels, away from the "cold and hard" place he left.