In this 1970 Italian classic, director Bernardo Bertolucci uses the camera frame to throw the audience off-kilter again and again.
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Rewatching the 1991 film classic JFK shows the intricate choreography of montage — and the line between fact and truth still being navigated today.
Like Stanley Kubrick before him, Christopher Nolan uses perspective to mess with our minds in his 2010 film Inception.
In a pivotal scene from Brad Pitt zombie movie World War Z, we see the frame shift from the individual to the undead mass. In doing so, it taps into deep fears.
In this video, Bruce Isaacs looks at Rome, Open City. Made in 1945, it was Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist response to the end of German occupation, and Italy’s history of Fascism under Benito Mussolini.
Back to the Future is one of the most loved films from the 1980s, and galvanised audiences across every demographic. In this episode of Close-Up, Bruce Isaacs looks at the politics underpinning the film.
When it was released in 1999, The Matrix introduced a new type of image: bullet-time. Bruce Isaacs explains why it has become one of the most influential special effects in the history of cinema.
Bruce Isaacs dissects a scene from Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. In this video, Isaacs looks at the director’s unique use of camera technique to create a deeply subjective and intimate sequence.
While Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette may not be faithful to historical events, the film is a rhythmic, impressionistic and comical retelling of the young queen’s life by a sophisticated filmmaker.
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey broke all the rules of science fiction cinema, and allowed the audience to experience a uniquely philosophical film about the evolution of human consciousness.
The final scene of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola deploys a technique known as parallel montage to great and rhythmic effect.
Bruce Isaacs analyses the deceptively complex closing scene of Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), starring Jim Carey and Kate Winslet.
