You still know their face. You no longer know who they are. Watching someone become a stranger in real time is its own category of loss, the kind you can't explain to anyone who isn't also watching it happen. So you go backward. Old films, familiar things, the texture of a time when people were still who you thought they were. These films meet you in that pull, and they let you feel what you're actually mourning without having to name it out loud.
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event:the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf:as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, a
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
A boy experiences first love, friendships and injustices growing up in 1960s Taiwan.
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
The films that follow lean into the texture of memory. They know what you are looking for in the past.
A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
Retired and widowed Chinese master chef Chu lives in modern day Taipei, with his three attractive daughters, all of whom are unattached. Soon, each daughter encounters a new man in their lives. When these new relationships blossom, stereotypes are broken and the living situation
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
Obsessive master thief Neil McCauley leads a top-notch crew on various daring heists throughout Los Angeles while determined detective Vincent Hanna pursues him without rest. Each man recognizes and respects the ability and the dedication of the other even though they are aware t
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to rel
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she conside
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
You can't go back. You can get close. These are close.