In This Moment Beautiful Tragedy

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s beloved classic A Canterbury Tale is a profoundly personal journey to Powell’s bucolic birthplace of Kent, England. Set amid the tumult of the Second World War, yet with a rhythm as delicate as a lullaby, the film follows three modern-day incarnations of Chaucer’s pilgrims - a melancholy “landgirl,” a plainspoken American GI, and a resourceful British sergeant - who are waylaid in the English countryside en route to the mythical town and forced to solve a bizarre village crime. Building to a majestic climax that ranks as one of the filmmaking duo’s finest achievements, the dazzling A Canterbury Tale has acquired a following of devotees passionate enough to qualify as pilgrims themselves.

The poignant, deadpan films of Aki Kaurismäki are pitched somewhere in the wintry nether lands between comedy and tragedy. And rarely in his body of work has the line separating those genres seemed thinner than in what is often identified as his “Proletariat Trilogy,” Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl. In these three films, something like social-realist farces, Kaurismäki surveys the working-class outcasts of his native Finland with detached yet disarming amusement. Featuring commanding, off-key visual compositions and delightfully dour performances, the films in this triptych exemplify the talents of a unique and highly influential film artist.

Widely acclaimed as on of the greatest horror films ever made, Nicolas Roeg's masterful 'Don't Look Now' is based on Daphne Du Maurier's shattering short story.
Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie give career-best performances as John and Laura Baxter, an art restorer and his wife struggling to recover from the trauma of their daughter's accidental drowning. To assuage their grief, the young British couple travel to wintry Venice, on a working holiday to restore a a church. Once there, they get involved with two otherworldly sisters, Heather and Wendy (Hilary Mason and Clelia Matania), one of whom is a blind medium who insists she can get them in touch with their late daughter and warns them of danger.

In her breathtaking and assured debut feature, Lynne Ramsay creates a haunting evocation of a troubled Glasgow childhood. Set during Scotland’s national garbage strike of the mid-1970s, Ratcatcher explores the experiences of a poor adolescent boy as he struggles to reconcile his dreams and his guilt with the abjection that surrounds him. Utilizing beautiful, elusive imagery, candid performances, and unexpected humor, Ratcatcher deftly contrasts urban decay with a rich interior landscape of hope and perseverance, resulting in a work at once raw and deeply poetic. criterion.com