Normalize releasing four-hour films theatrically! If Brady “The Brutalist” Corbet can do it, there’s no reason why Quentin Tarantino, near the peak of his Hollywood heat, should have been forced to split his globe-spanning action opus in half, especially when it plays so well welded back together. more »
A woman, employed as a website content moderator, comes across a series of violent videos reproducing death scenes from a film. more »
John Boorman was left out of Peter Biskind’s canon-setting book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, but there’s an argument to be made that the New Hollywood began here. Boorman’s adaptation of Richard Stark’s hardboiled fiction infuses a classic noir tale with existential fatalism and downright experimental techniques. Oh, and many beli more »
In 1930s Algeria, the daily life of an indifferent Frenchman is shaken by the death of his mother and a fateful encounter on a beach. more »
If you know the name Gloria Swanson, this film is probably why, and that is perhaps as it should be. A darling of the silent cinema, she was brought out of retirement by Billy Wilder to play the reclusive bygone star at the center of his Hollywood-insider masterpiece. It’s thus easy to mistake her for her character, which unders more »
The children of a once famous artist hire a forger to complete some unfinished, long ago abandoned canvases so they'll have an inheritance when he dies. more »
Humans evolved to make meaning, but what if they can’t? That’s the question that lies at the heart of the greatest true-crime film of them all. Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and an exquisite supporting cast chase after the serial killer who slew five in the Bay Area in the late 1960s. David Fincher’s maniacal more »
For most filmgoers, Gloria Swanson = Nora Desmond. But she filled those slippers thanks to silent classics such as Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly. Swanson plays a convent lass who catches the eye of a rakish baron, propelling our flirty ingénue on a fateful course. Queen Kelly is an unfinished film, technically, but there’s no more »
Let’s face it: John Boorman’s ‘70s succès de scandal put the image of Appalachian people back 50, maybe 100 years. Viewed more than 50 years on, however, the entitled proto-bro hubris of Burt Reynolds’ would-be Natural Man and his crew of Atlanta slickers (Jon Voight, Ronnie Cox, and Ned Beatty) makes their brutal fates seem eve more »
I SWEAR is the inspiring, extraordinary life story of notable Tourette Syndrome campaigner, John Davidson, MBE. Kirk Jones’ emotionally engaging, funny and compelling film charts John Davidson’s Tourette's diagnosis at the age of 15 years old. Set within 1980s Britain, the story follows him throughout his troubled teens and earl more »
Long-buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star Mother Mary reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer, Sam Anselm, on the eve of her comeback performance. more »
Budd Boetticher’s archetypal Westerns with Randolph Scott are finally getting their dusty, parched flowers, and it’s about time. Scott plays his usual lone, upright cowboy, this time tangled up with three murderous thugs and frontier damsel Maureen O’Sullivan. The motor driving the plot is that Scott is more admirable than every more »
Akira Kurosawa’s final collaboration with Toshiro Mifune features the topknots and kimonos of Seven Samurai and Yojimbo and embodies an ethic of stoic service. But this time Mifune plays a doctor running a ramshackle clinic in a poor neighborhood of Tokyo who has to teach a social-climbing young physician (Yūzō Kayama) how to ca more »
Paul Thomas Anderson’s golden-age porn-biz epic isn’t really about porn, or even sex. It’s about family. None of PTA’s flash one-ers or dead-on needle drops would matter if it weren’t for the keen insight of his script or the performances of his killer cast: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Burt Reynolds, Heather G more »
Follows Miranda Priestly's struggle against Emily Charlton, her former assistant turned rival executive, as they compete for advertising revenue amidst declining print media while Miranda nears retirement. more »
Steal This Story, Please! tells the story of iconic independent journalist Amy Goodman, who’s personal story, warm and radical spirit, and utterly fearless work as a journalist are interwoven with the monumental events she has covered over the years. The film highlights the critical role of journalism in shaping our understandin more »
Following her acclaimed 2024 company debut in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, soprano Asmik Grigorian returns to the Met as Tatiana, the lovestruck young heroine in this ardent operatic adaptation of Pushkin, which will be transmitted live from the Metropolitan Opera stage to cinemas worldwide on May 2. Baritone Igor Golovatenko is more »
Emily Bronte doesn't need pomo frippery or textual hair-splitting to work. William Wyler's 1939 adaptation cast Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as Heathcliff and Cathy and shot the outdoor scenes in Southern California. It'll still clutch your heart and tweak your ducts. - Lee Gardner more »
Ridley Scott's breakout is so well made that, except for the computer displays, you could release it new tomorrow and it would still look fresh. Its sci-fi/horror mashup still gets ripped off on the regular more than 40 years later. When Scott revisited it for a pointless "director's cut," he barely touched it. It is that good. more »
Francois Truffaut ranks as perhaps the most overrated Nouvelle Vague director, but his semi-autobiographical debut feature will live forever. Fourteen-year-old Jean-Pierre Leaud's extraordinary performance as an urban adolescent let down by his loser parents, school, and society and running out of good options channels an more »
The premise was going to work almost no matter what: Dennis Hopper's mad bomber has rigged a city bus to blow if it drops below 50 mph as it careens through bottlenecked LA. But director Jan De Bont, editor Jon Wright, and athletic young star Keanu Reeves create kinetic cinema magic here. more »
Minor Hitchcock once best known for having been shot as a series of long oners, Rope now fascinates more for gay subtext that is just barely "sub." John Dall and Farley Granger play adult roommates who murder a pal to see if they can get away with it, then serve a light supper on the chest containing the corpse. Jimmy Stewart pl more »
Frida Kahlo is a phenomenon. She is arguably the world’s favorite female artist – beloved by young and old. Exhibition On Screen’s award-winning film – first released during covid to a restricted audience - is back by popular demand with an exciting new addition from the blockbuster transatlantic exhibition from Tate Britain and more »
Yorgos Lanthimos enjoys the awards and the stars and the big budgets now, but nothing he's done lately is as original, shrewd, outrageous, or deadpan hilarious as his second feature. A Greek family man and his wife have decided to protect their children from isolating them from it. That's already telling you too much. Just see i more »
The first of Yasujiro Ozu's classic collaborations with Setsuko Hara amply demonstrates why he cast her five more times. She plays the adult daughter of fellow Ozu stalwart Chishu Ryu. They have become comfortable with her tending him, but as they both age, he knows she must start her own life. Ozu and Ryu work their usual minim more »
The film that made Pam Grier a star. Nurse by day, badass by night, she's out for revenge against the pusher who hooked her sister. But as she kicks ass up the ladder toward Mr. Big, she runs into more than she bargained for. Grier easily handles the sex and violence inherent in classic Blaxploitation, but it's the vulnerability more »
Every year hundreds of women flock to temporary harvesting jobs in the rice paddies of Northern Italy, a perfect setting for working-class drama and romance. Doris Dowling is soaking in it - on the lam from the law, torn between a crook boyfriend and an upright soldier, trying to get on with her fellow workers. Giuseppe De Santi more »
On May 30, the Metropolitan Opera’s 2025–26 Live in HD season comes to a close with a live transmission of American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera, a magical-realist portrait of Mexico’s painterly power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, with libretto by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz. Fashioned as a r more »
John Woo was just another struggling Hong Kong filmmaker before this story of brotherhood, sacrifice, and many, many round of 9mm ammunition rebooted his career. Ti Lung and the uber-charismatic Chow Yun-fat star as down-and-out gangsters dragged back into the life. Woo himself plays a small role as well as choreographing the pi more »
Marcello Mastroianni stands in for director Federico Fellini as a celebrated cinema auteur besieged by the demands of his life and career and blocked over the creation of his next film (which you are currently watching). But no capsule logline captures the mindmeld effect of Fellini's mix of reality, memory, dreams, and fantasy, more »
Amy Heckerling transposes Jane Austen's Emma to Southern California mall culture with Alicia Silverstone as the contemporary stand-in for Austen's title busybody, matchmaking and Pygmalioning it up even as her own life gets a bit random. Even laden with 30-year speech and standards, the director's script sparkles. A perfect film more »
Is Close-Up a documentary? An Iranian man who pretended to be a famous Iranian director appears as himself, as does the family he hoaxed and the journalist who broke the story. Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami secured permission to film the man's trial, and asks questions of the defendant on camera during the proceedings. Issues of pe more »
Thank god for Val Kilmer. Even Kurt Russell and his vigorous mustache can't quite save this epic Western saga from its self-seriousness and open-range sprawl. But Kilmer's Doc Holiday - a consumptive dandy and cardsharp quick with a pistol and a withering quip - makes every scene he's in a hoot and sticking around well worth it. more »
