Shelly Duvall was an acting genius, and Robert Altman’s dreamlike tour de force presents the most eloquent proof. Her clueless single working gal is so blithely bluff that she impresses a rube (Sissy Spacek) fresh off the bus even as she otherwise inspires snickers on- and off-screen. But hidden depths lurk in these characters, more »
After undergoing a facial reconstructive surgery, Edward becomes fixated on an actor in a stage production based on his former life. more »
At 11:30pm on October 11th, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television forever. Find out what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. more »
The story of how a young Donald Trump started his real estate business in 1970s and 80s New York with the helping hand of infamous lawyer Roy Cohn. more »
Failed comedian Arthur Fleck meets the love of his life, Harley Quinn, while in Arkham State Hospital. Upon release, the pair embark on a doomed romantic misadventure. more »
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made some of the greatest films ever, period, including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and A Matter of Life and Death, the latter two coming to the Charles revival series later this fall. In this adroit doc, Martin Scorsese spends a couple of hours enthusing in illustrated and intimate deta more »
The crazy thing about Wong Kar-wai’s international breakout is that it doesn’t really become the film people love and remember until about halfway through. Not that the opening star-crossed encounter between Brigitte Lin’s blonde-wigged moll and Takeshi Kaneshiro’s detective is forgettable—far from it. But once heartbroken Tony more »
An up-and-coming chef and a recent divorcée find their lives forever changed when a chance encounter brings them together, in a decade-spanning, deeply moving romance. more »
A bloody miracle. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger conjured the high Himalayas entirely on British soundstages and created a torrid, visually rapturous exploration of duty and suppressed passion amid a colony of British nuns (led by Deborah Kerr). Jean Simmons dons brownface to play a local, but the film’s essential theme o more »
Having missed out on his cult's long awaited ritual suicide, an obnoxious loser teams up with his bogus ex-messiah to rebuild their doomsday commune. Traveling together through middle America, the constantly-bickering duo induct a military wannabe, a mentally unstable mom, and a mysterious foreign hitchhiker into their cult... b more »
Before there were “Wes Anderson films,” Wes Anderson made an unexpected sophomore breakout so rich, so sparkling, so tonally perfect that it bought him the freedom to make whatever he wanted . . . which was Wes Anderson films. Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Oliva Williams sweetly play real people with pr more »
“Mel Brooks” and “refined” usually don’t appear in the same sentence, but paying homage to the Universal horror universe provided an elegant monochrome frame to elevate his Borscht Belt shtick. A murderer’s row of ‘70s cinema second bananas—Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars, Marty Feldman, Terri Garr, and Peter Boyle— more »
Pet-theory time. While the 1956 original sounded a warning about Cold War paranoia, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake offers an elegy for the 1960s. Donald Sutherland leads the real San Franciscans, floppy haired intellectuals who like exotic food and going to book events, while the alien-pod people who would replace them strike firs more »
Former French Resistance fighter Jean-Pierre Melville slips behind the front lines of World War II for a hard look at the vicious war in the streets of occupied France. As with a Resistance cell, information is parceled out slowly, obliquely—you follow Lino Ventura before you know why. Soon, you’re trapped deep in a world of sud more »
200 years after its opening and a century after acquiring its first Van Gogh works, the National Gallery, London is hosting the UK’s biggest ever Van Gogh exhibition. Van Gogh is not only one of the most beloved artists of all time, but perhaps the most misunderstood. more »
It says a lot that a documentary about Werner Herzog dragging a steamship over a mountain is as compelling as the film he made about a character dragging a steamship over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo). Doc legend Les Blank’s camera shadows Herzog as he plunges into the Peruvian jungle and surmounts every muddy, sweaty obstacle to ca more »
If you have a friend who’s always whispering “Who’s he?” or “Why did that happen?” during movies, leave them home. The plot of Howard Hawks’ classic adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled novel approaches quantum physics. But Humphrey Bogart made Philip Marlowe iconic, and the crackling script, featuring work by the great L more »
One of the most beautiful American films ever made. Richard Gere and Brooke Adams star as migrant workers and secret lovers who decide to dupe wealthy farmer Sam Shepard. Heartbreak and tragedy ensue. The breath-stopping ravishment of Terence Malick’s magic-hour shooting schedule is leavened perfectly by the vinegar and innocenc more »
Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys chronicles the powerful friendship between two young African American men navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida. more »
Nothing like an Éric Rohmer film to remind you of how Mickey Mouse most cinema is when it comes to how people and their relationships actually work. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a stoic engineer who pines for a woman he sees in church. Or maybe he should pursue the more libertine woman with whom he has a charged overnight encoun more »
Writer/director Paul Schrader’s most underrated film? It’s a crowded field, but his Dantean descent into the ‘70s porn underworld is a contender. George C. Scott’s Calvinist Midwesterner ventures to Los Angeles to find his missing teen daughter with Peter Boyle’s sleazy private eye and Season Hubley’s sexworker as his guides. Th more »
Like nothing else you will see onscreen this year. Made and banned in pre-revolution Iran and unseen again until 2020, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s film rarely leaves the walls of an oppressively opulent house as a family squabbles over an inheritance. Betrayal, murder, and other less tangible dreads rear their heads. Do not miss. -Le more »
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film adapts Jean Genet’s novel into a queer seaside fever dream. Brad Davis stars as the titular sailor amid a hotbed of vice, drug dealing, murder, repressed (and flagrant) man love, and everybody sleeping with everybody else, plus the director’s signature theatrical flair and lurid vibe. What’s more »
A film romance unlike any other. WWII bomber pilot David Niven falls for radio operator Kim Hunter as his plane goes down in flames. His impossible survival sets off an interplanar incident as life and afterlife wrestle with the power of their love. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s use of brain-boggling design, practical more »
The director behind French cult animation classic Fantastic Planet and French comics god Möbius teamed up on an animated film? Vraiment! René Laloux and Jean “Möbius” Giraud did collaborate on this space adventure, in which a team of explorers race to save a child marooned on a hostile planet. Sort of like the trippiest episode more »
Bette Davis’s wealthy married woman shoots a man who is not her husband dead on her front steps. Dozens see her do it. It’s up to a lawyer/family friend played by James Stephenson to get her off on self-defense. But is she as innocent as she seems? William Wyler’s noir benefits from his expert direction, the sweaty tropical sett more »
The focused madness of Werner Herzog’s filmmaking obsession found its purest expression in his account of a European (Klaus Kinski) who hatches an elaborate scheme to bring grand opera to the backwaters of the early 20th-century Amazon. All he has to do is drag a steamship over a mountain. Animating feat aside, it remains one of more »
More than just a painter, Raphael was one of the most extraordinary artists of the Renaissance but is often misunderstood or mythologised. On the basis of this extraordinary exhibition in Rome, this film allows Raphael, for the first time, to be truly revealed. more »
An journey into the life and art of Venice's famous view-painter, no artist better captures the essence and allure of Venice than Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. more »
Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous names in art history, his image and his art are everywhere, yet few know the remarkable story of his rise to greatness. Young Picasso takes an in-depth look at the journey of Picasso’s life and traces his path to genius. more »
The Impressionists are the most popular group in art history - millions flock every year to marvel at their masterpieces. But, to begin with, they were scorned, penniless outsiders. 1874 was the year that changed everything. more »
The spectacular sculptures and paintings of Michelangelo seem so familiar to us, but what do we really know about this Renaissance giant? more »
Mismatched cousins David and Benji reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the odd-couple's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. more »
