One Show Only! It’s become a shorthand reference for swinging Rome and the louche early ‘60s, but then Moby Dick isn’t really about a whale. Marcello Mastroianni’s playboy journalist cavorts through the city, chasing celebrities and women and eroding his soul in the process. Speaking of shorthand, this is where the full floweri more »
David Lynch presaged the modern internet back when the real thing was two tin cans and a string. Noir always posited a realm of vice and violence just beneath the surface of the sunlit world of family dinners and dates to the dance, but Blue Velvet makes the dark underneath’s accessibility—and more »
Yasujirō Ozu gets a bit soapy here, albeit in an Ozu kind of way. A bored salaryman (Ryō Ikebe) feeling distanced from his wife (Chikage Awashima) starts an affair with a young colleague (Keiko Kishi). Really, just admiring the director’s trademark three-or-four-shot transitions is almost worth the price of admission alone. -Lee 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 United States’ involvement in the 1960 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba and the country’s subsequent decline into decades of dictatorship and ongoing instability is well-established. Filmmaker John Grimonprez creates a stylish and verve-y account of that history by infusing his 2024 documentary with the musi more »
Cultures collide when an introverted doctor brings his white boyfriend home to meet his traditional East Indian family. more »
THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND follows Charles (Tim Key), an eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island and dreams of getting his favorite musicians, McGwyer Mortimer (Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan) back together. more »
A gay man makes a deal with his lesbian friend: a green-card marriage for him, in exchange for in vitro fertilization treatments for her. Plans evolve as Min's grandmother surprises them with a Korean wedding banquet. more »
Harmony Korine transcends his usual Cinema of Troll-ery as a quartet of college students (headlined by former Disney teens Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez) turn to crime to escape their ordinary lives for a week. But when you stare into the bikini-clad beer-bong abyss, it stares back. James Franco has to be seen to be believed. more »
In a remote village on the island of Carpathia, a shy girl is raised to fear an elusive animal species known as ochi. But when she discovers a wounded baby ochi has been left behind, she escapes on a quest to bring him home. more »
Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. more »
Muriel and her husband Lee are about to begin a bright new life, which is upended by the arrival of Lee's brother. Muriel embarks on a secret life, gambling on racehorses and discovering a love she never thought possible. more »
James Fox is a classic upper-crust Brit twit. Dirk Bogarde is the perfect manservant for a respectable gentleman —or is he? Rather than settle for class-war cliches, screenwriter Harold Pinter and director Joseph Losey serve up something altogether more complex and delicious, and Fox gets in a dry run for his turn in Performance more »
An engaged interfaith couple are about to have their parents meet for the first time over a Shabbat dinner when an accidental death gets in the way. more »
Endlessly ripped-off to this day, David Fincher’s breakout manages the neat trick of balancing deep stylization (e.g. the constant rain) with palpable grit and realism as beleaguered cops chase a next-level serial killer. It helps that he’s got Morgan Freeman to ballast the emotional tone and aspirations to profundity. Brad Pitt more »
A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. When he is humiliated by a group of locals, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising and pushes him to his breaking point. more »
Michael Curtiz out-pulps James M. Cain’s original novel, staging a murder in the very first scene and streamlining the melodrama. The resulting adaptation not only brings the noir, it amps up the class division and the mother/daughter love/hate. If you ever wondered why Joan Crawford was a big deal, this is an excellent way to f more »
A fading midwestern town in which Frendo the clown, a symbol of bygone success, reemerges as a terrifying scourge. more »
For 13-year-old boys of all ages. Back in the day, the titular comic brought European artists like Jean “Moebius” Giraud and “adult” themes to newstands. The titular film brings a brace of the comic’s stories to life through budget animation and a soundtrack crammed with bespoke tunes from classic rockers. Content warning: many, more »
It’s a genuine shock when Chet Baker cops to being 57 in this biodoc—he looks 30 years older. The contrast between his heartthrob younger days as the Great White Hope of jazz trumpet and the withered, scuffling addict of his final year on earth fuels fashion photographer Bruce Weber’s suitably elegant film. Despite the ad-campai more »
Is there anyone who doesn’t light up a little about this movie? Part fairy tale, part meta-comedy, Rob Reiner’s take on William Goldman’s story of farm boys, princesses, pirates, and giants still delights with its wry wit and flashes of genuine pathos. Secret MVP: Robin Wright Penn, who makes something really hard look easy. -Le more »
An insomniac musician encounters a mysterious stranger, leading to a journey that challenges everything he knows about himself. more »
The fact that RKO cut nearly an hour out of Orson Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane and it still stands as one of the greatest films ever made has inspired decades of pained what-ifs. Welles shadows the title Midwestern clan as their 19th-century wealth and influence succumbs to onrushing modernity and simple hubris. Every scene more »
The spectacular sculptures and paintings of Michelangelo seem so familiar to us, but what do we really know about this Renaissance giant? more »
Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. more »
Every generation seems to have their coming-of-age film that Gets It. For the ‘80s kids, it was River’s Edge. A suburban hesher kills his girlfriend and shows his friends (including Keanu Reeves and Crispin Glover) her discarded body. Poorly equipped to deal by their ‘70s-hangover upbringings, they react mostly by not reacting a more »
A desperately single bookseller, lost in a fantasy world, finds herself forced to fulfil her dreams of becoming a writer in order to stop messing up her love life. more »
The Nouveau Roman’s big-screen bow remains baffling and entrancing. Alain Renais’ camera prowls the Baroque halls and grounds of a luxe resort and occasionally alights on the dispassionate constituents of a love triangle as screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet’s narration goes on about its own elliptical business. An indelible cinem more »
As usual for a Pedro Almodóvar film, the plot here is so kinked and outrageous as to defy encapsulation. But wellspring performances from Cecelia Roth, Marisa Paredes, and Penélope Cruz wow. The director’s exploration of motherhood, sisterhood, and chosen family beguiles. And it looks like a billion pesetas. -LeeGardner more »
A pair of Werner Herzog’s underseen documentary shorts. God’s Angry Man focuses on Gene Scott, an old-school televangelist with a combative style—Herzog finds him glowering silently into a live television camera until the donations flow. High-speed cameras catch champion ski jumper Steiner flying high over spectators on his way more »
Dario Argento’s black-gloved hands strike again, this time racking up gruesome killings that mirror the ones Tony Franciosa’s novelist invented for his books. Can the scribbler figure out who’s taking his work as bloody inspiration before he falls victim? Crazy stalkers! Axe murders! Lesbians! Insane twists! C-movie bellwether J more »
The story of a family and a family business. more »
What was the first action movie? One could make an argument for Henri-George Clouzot’s hot-sweat epic. There are only a few fights or firearms involved as desperate men (led by Yves Montand) stranded in a jungle hellhole seize a shot at trucking volatile nitroglycerin over hundreds of miles of gnarly road, but the two-fisted plo more »
What a treasure. Roma filmmaker Tony Gatlif uses his camera to track a real-life odyssey—the migration of Roma people and their musical culture from their roots in Rajasthan, in India, along the Mediterranean to Spain. No interviews, no title cards, no context. Just intimate, vibrant music and dance performances, almost any of w more »
A life-affirming, genre-bending story based on Stephen King's novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz. more »
A matchmaker's lucrative business is complicated when she falls into a toxic love triangle that threatens her clients. more »
Even “minor” Hitchcock looms tall over most directors’ peaks. Here he crams the title vessel with survivors from a WWII U-boat attack and wrests a world of drama, suspense, and intrigue from the cramped space between the gunwales. Tallulah Bankhead toplines a sterling cast. -Lee Gardner more »
Paul Verhoeven’s polarizing cinema punchline has aged well in the sense that it hasn’t gotten any worse. Screenwriter Joe Eszterhaz’s script about a frequently nude naif dancing her way to the top in Las Vegas remains a ridiculous line-o-rama, but the real reason the film inspires lols is poor Elizabeth Berkley, whose too-much p more »
