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“Three Powerful Biopics: Oppenheimer, Napoleon, & Maestro” By Arnold Anthony Schmidt When it comes to storytelling, people who enjoy movies put filmmakers in a peculiar situation. On the one hand, […]

“Campy Comedy Matinee Delivers Laughs & Romance, as well as a Wacky Lesson in Film History” By Arnold Anthony Schmidt Sometimes, films capture the essence of a particular moment in […]

Sarah Polley’s Women Talking: A Movie of Ideas By Arnold Anthony Schmidt As might be expected, the most intriguing thing about director Sarah Polley’s film Women Talking, nominated for Best […]

“The World Turned Upside Down: The Transformative Energy of Cabaret” By Arnold Anthony Schmidt Powerful art often comes out of personal experiences, especially experiences undergone at moments of profound historical […]

“Trading Places: A Comic Switch with an Eye on Eddie Murphy” By Arnold Anthony Schmidt Most of us have spent time daydreaming about “what if?” What if we were richer? […]

“The Manchurian Candidate: A Political Thriller That Packs a Wallop”  By Arnold Anthony Schmidt  Back in the day, talk of the Beatles and “Beatle-mania” saturated the news. My mother claimed that, […]

Spectacle & Personality: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette  By Arnold Anthony Schmidt  Legend has it that Marie Antoinette, when confronted with the poverty of breadless peasants, reportedly said “let them eat […]

Rebel Without a Cause and “The Kids Today!” By Arnold Anthony Schmidt It seems as if people have always complained about “the kids today!” Those young people don’t respect their […]

Kiss Me Deadly: A Classic Film Noir with a Twist  By Arnold Anthony Schmid Admit it: when you think about film noir, you don’t associate it with the nineteenth-century Pre-Raphaelite poet […]

“A Road Trip With a Twist: Compartment No. 6”  By Arnold Anthony Schmidt  Like many, I particularly enjoy narratives in which audiences first see characters as one kind of person, […]

“Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” by Arnold Schmidt Films by Iranian Asghar Farhadi, one of the few directors to win two Oscars in the Best Foreign […]

By: Arnold Anthony Schmidt

“Life in the Rear-view Mirror”
(Drive My Car)

When a movie has a title with the word “drive” in it, audiences expect highspeed chases, acrobatic escapes, and catastrophic car crashes. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s elegiac Drive My Car has none of those physical actions, but it will definitely carry viewers along on an emotional ride, with lovers trying to chase memories and escape regrets, only to experience catastrophic psychological impacts in the end.