Producer · 1962

Ted Hope

3: briefs
13:00: average
39 min: in total

On film.briefs3

Ride with the Devil

Ang Lee · 1999

Ang Lee’s 1999 film Ride with the Devil follows young Missouri bushwhackers during the Civil War, adapting Daniel Woodrell’s novel with deliberate slowness and minimal exposition. Shot by Frederick Elmes and written by James Schamus, it foregrounds domestic endurance over battlefield drama, treating violence as rupture rather than climax. Its themes — loyalty, freedom, gendered labour, and the weight of time — emerge through gesture and silence, not speech. Though commercially overlooked and structurally demanding, it remains a singular, unhurried portrait of war’s human residue.

13:00

Storytelling

Todd Solondz · 2001

Todd Solondz’s 2001 film Storytelling divides itself into two unrelated segments — 'Fiction' and 'Non-Fiction' — each dissecting how narrative power operates in education, documentary, and family life. With restrained performances, underlit interiors, and a refusal to resolve its ethical dilemmas, it sustains a low, persistent discomfort. Its value lies in structural rigour and thematic consistency, not emotional payoff.

13:00

The Wedding Banquet

Ang Lee · 1993

Ang Lee’s 1993 film follows a gay Taiwanese man in Manhattan who marries a mainland Chinese woman to satisfy his parents and secure her US residency. When his parents arrive for the wedding banquet, the deception deepens — and so do the bonds between the three adults. Shot on location in New York with bilingual dialogue and understated performances, it balances comedy and pathos without resorting to caricature or easy resolution.