The New Classics - Y Tu Mama Tambien

Michael Cusumano here to add a title that is near and dear to my heart to the New Classics pantheon 

Scene: Epilogue
The Narrator in coming-of-age stories most often represents a grown-up version of the protagonist. Think The Sandlot or A Christmas Story, or the quintessential example, The Wonder Years, voices looking back, awash in nostalgia. In Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También not only is the narrator not a character, but the voice is indifferent, even coldly clinical in its omniscience, as likely to note the fate of a passing group of wild pigs as to reveal the deepest secrets of the protagonists.

We get used to the voice as a welcome companion throughout the film. Its flat, objective viewpoint is a welcome respite from the main trio’s frequent emotional upheavals. Little do we realize we are being set up for the emotional gut punch of the film’s epilogue...

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The New Classics - Collateral

Michael Cusumano here to take us back to the Summer of 2004 for the latest film to join the ranks of The New Classics.

Scene: Jazz Club
While Collateral has both feet down in the realistic, that trademark Michael Mann style is just intoxicating enough to make my mind wander to the mystical. I can't help but view Mann’s thriller as a modern retelling of Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Tom Cruise’s Vincent is the Grim Reaper and Jamie Foxx’s Max is von Sydow’s knight, granted a temporary reprieve because he has piqued Death’s interest...

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The New Classics - A Separation

Michael Cusumano back again with my new series on great scenes/films of the 21st Century. This week a title we will surely hear often when the best of the decade lists start rolling in...

 

Scene: Razieh is Fired (aka The Incident)
It’s rare for a movie, even a great movie, to sneak up on the audience the way Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation does.

The screenplay is centered around an inflection point. Everything pulling the characters inexorably toward, or ricocheting off of, the moment when a man shoves a woman out his front door. Yet this action is not granted any special emphasis. First-time viewers have no clue they’ve witnessed the action around which the entire story pivots. It is only a few short scenes later, when the man is on trial for causing the miscarriage of the women he pushed (a murder charge in Iran) that the weight of that shove comes crashing home...

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The New Classics - Sexy Beast

Michael Cusumano here to revisit one of the most indelible performances of 2001 for our new series "The New Classics"...

Scene: Don Logan converses with his reflection

How many viewings of Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast does it take before you realize Don Logan is the most sympathetic character in the movie?  

Don shows up in Spain with two missions: to reconnect with his old friend Gal, and to see if he has a shot with his lost love, Jackie. And what does he find? Not only does his friend attempt to blow him off, but the object of his affection is married to some spineless twit and can’t stand so much as to look at him. My heart goes out to the guy...

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The New Classics - Eastern Promises

Michael Cusumano here to argue a case for the the best fight scene of the last two decades.

The Scene: The Sauna Fight
It’s no surprise that just about every discussion of the sauna fight from Eastern Promises dwells on the bare skin. If the King of Middle Earth strips down to his tattoos and takes on two goons in a bathhouse brawl it’s gonna dominate the conversation.

And it’s not only gawking. It’s thematically on point. This scene uses nakedness to make you feel a character’s vulnerability as effectively as any film since Psycho, plus all the skin on display reflects the film’s obsession with bodies -- bodies as currency and bodies defaced and disfigured... 

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