Oh, Mother.

Regardless of its status as one of the best action films of all time, Aliens is essentially an old fashioned story about mothers, a la Mrs. Miniver or Terms of Endearment.

While James Cameron's visual subtleties have never been praised, truth is that the guy should get more credit when it comes to representing ideas through images.

In my favorite sequence in the film, Cameron essentially recreates birth as Lt. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and company, try to take little Newt (Carrie Henn) out of the evil aliens' sight. Ripley has developed a complicated relationship with the child after finding out her own kid had died and in this sequence we see their bond materialize.

The picture above shows us Newt's passage from the mother's womb through the tunnels where she will be expelled.

Later, she lands in a place surrounded by water where she still can't call herself "alive" to her mother. This placenta-ish kind of environment forces Ripley to break through to get her, which leads to my favorite shot in the film.

Here we see Ripley trying to get hold of her new daughter by literally breaking her free from her wet captivity. Notice how Cameron shows us three figures: the mother, an invisible father figure (Michael Biehn's hand) and Newt's tiny hand trying to find her way to mother.

We are reminded that the story is not about the child but about the mother and therefore Weaver's face is the only one we see. It's all about her struggles, her compassion and her determination to, well, keep the alien bitch away from her.

Little does mommy know that she won't be able to protect her child all the time...

Beautiful metaphor for life itself, no?

This post is part of Lt. Nathaniel's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series.

"It's a hard world for little things."

The Night of the Hunter is above all a movie about storytelling.
From its opening scene in which we see Lillian Gish narrating a passage from a lullaby as a group of cherub-like children materialize from the stars, we get the overall idea of what the movie will be like.
What few people tell you is that unlike movies where children bedtime stories are filled with princesses, unicorns and happy endings, the one we're told here is marked by murder, tragedy and fear.
Completely Grimm-like (and outstandingly grim) the film follows the twisted Rev. Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) as he sets on destroying two orphans (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) whose mother he murdered (was any actress killed by her husband more than Shelley Winters during the 50's?)
The film which was directed by Charles Laughton (he never directed again!) has a pervading mood of melancholy only overshadowed by its perversity.
It's not as if Laughton likes to make his characters suffer he just seems to have too much respect for them to give them an easy way out.
It's also interesting to note that Laughton never had any children of his own, which might explain why he never seems interested in being too reverential and sugarcoating life for the kids who ended up watching this movie.


"John, would you tell me a story?" asks little Pearl (Bruce) to big brother John (Chapin)

The film was shot by DP Stanley Cortez using techniques that give the entire film the quality of a Gustav Doré engraving by way of Dr. Mabuse.
In this way he and Laughton are able to come up with iconic shots that seem to be extracted from either a storybook or a nightmare (the scene where Powell rides under the moonlight as the kids watch him from a barn still gives me goosebumps).
And my favorite shot in the film encompasses this very idea.


Lillian Gish's Ms. Cooper keeps vigil as Powell lures outside her home waiting to attack and take the kids with him.
I love how the lightning reminds you of something nostalgic like Whistler's Mother but then you realize this lady has a huge rifle with her.


I'll be cheating because I didn't go for a single shot, given that I see this series of shots as a single one united by Gish's pose and defined by the way in which they manipulate light.
As Gish waits in the dark one of the kids comes up to her with a candle, perhaps to reveal that the light banishes evil (giving the entire scene yet another rich layer of how Laughton deals with spirituality and faith)


Ms. Cooper tells her to turn the thing off, completely sure that the darkness can only remain such surrounded by darkness, and when she does we realize Powell is gone.
You could say that in this moment Laughton materializes all of our childhood fears and takes them to the level of adulthood where we realize that perhaps fairy tales do not come true.

This post is part of the lovely Nat's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series.

A White Prophet.

It was a wonderful night for two of the year's best films which continued collecting the awards they began garnering in Cannes almost a year ago.

Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" deservedly won the prestigious ASC award for motion picture cinematography beating fellow Oscar nominees "Avatar", Inglourious Basterds" and "The Hurt Locker".
This could bode well for Austrian DP Christian Berger come Oscar day if it weren't for the fact that the Academy rarely chooses the best in the bunch.
Oscar and ASC have matched four times in the past decade and usually the guild has chosen the worthiest nominee (the year Emmanuel Lubezki won for "Children of Men" being the clearest example).
They have also shown their love for black and white in the past giving their top award to Roger Deakins for "The Man Who Wasn't There".
Also, contrary to what "The Hollywood Reporter" is saying this isn't the first time that a foreign language film takes the top award. Just five years ago Bruno Delbonnel won for his exquisite sepia work in "A Very Long Engagement". It also wouldn't mean the ASC has suddenly gone foreign, only one out of the five last winners was American.

Across the Atlantic, Jacques Audiard's brilliant "A Prophet" won nine Cesar awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Niels Arestrup) and in a surprising event both Best Actor and Breakthrough Actor for the amazing Tahar Rahim.
Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress and in one of those strange things only the French understand "Gran Torino" beat "Milk", "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The White Ribbon" to take home Best Foreign Language Film.


Both movies are the the top contenders to win the foreign film Oscar in a week and honestly both are absolutely deserving of all the praise they've gotten.

ASC Nominees.

Barry Ackroyd, BSC for "The Hurt Locker"
Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS for "Nine"
Christian Berger, AAC for "The White Ribbon"
Mauro Fiore, ASC for "Avatar"
Robert Richardson, ASC for "Inglourious Basterds"

Finally a guild set of nominees that doesn't make me want to kick someone. It's a shame that these people keep on ignoring "Bright Star"-especially in this category where it excelled like no other movie this year-but to see "The White Ribbon" included is a true delight.
Let's remember the ASC gave its top award to Bruno Delbonnel a few years ago for "A Very Long Engagement", while Oscar went to Robert Richardson for "The Aviator".
They might want to give Richardson their award this year for his incredible work in Quentin Tarantino's WWII fantasy.
But still no "Bright Star" marks a truly sad note for this guild. Let's hope Oscar makes this right.

The Passion of Ingrid Bergman.

Given how "Europa '51" is Roberto Rossellini's attempt to bring Francis of Assisi to neorealist life, it makes total sense that he would ask cinematographer Aldo Tonti to light and shoot Ingrid Bergman like a saint huh?

But not any saint, the film's light plan seems to be drawn straight out of C.T Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc".

Bergman, has rarely looked as tremulous and ethereal.