David Sterritt

NOTE: The following essay contains spoilers.If someone made Time Bandits today, it’s a good bet that the deus ex machina that saves the world would be a wizard of the Tolkien or Hogwarts type. But in Terry Gilliam’s first masterpiece, the deus ex…

Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.

Errol Morris’s documentary investigation into the life and theories of Stephen Hawking sets one man against the universe.

John Frankenheimer burrows into the insidious side of the American sixties in his visually dazzling thriller.

Mike Leigh’s breakthrough is a funny film about serious things, and an emotional and slyly political take on consumer culture.

Misunderstood by Hollywood, embraced by critics, this fatalistic fantasy remains Terry Gilliam’s ultimate trip.

No mere jigsaw movie, David Fincher’s thriller is also a nuanced character study, a satire of corporate culture, and a film about filmmaking.

“Sometimes I feel like little Eva, running across the ice . . . with the dogs yapping at my ass,” Robert Altman said in 1976, the year before 3 Women debuted. “Maybe the reason I’m doing all this is so I can get a lot done before they catch …

A fearless tragicomedy about hope, dread, longing, and forgiveness, Life During Wartime (2010) is Todd Solondz’s boldest and most haunting movie to date, carrying his exploration of Middle American malaise into new territory. As before, he probes t…

The Thin Red Line, arguably the greatest war film ever made, ended two decades of silence from Terrence Malick, cinema’s wandering auteur. The silence wasn’t entirely self-imposed, since during this time he tried to launch a few productions—…

Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (Knopf) begins with an epigram that pretty well sums up Altman’s attitude toward “truth” and “realism” in cinema and life. “I don’t think anybody remembers the truth, the facts,” the great filmmaker s…

Whatever you’ve heard about Sweet Movie, the audacious and outrageous political comedy by Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev, there’s a good chance it’s wrong. Ever since this mischievous masterpiece had its Cannes premiere, in 1974, ill-advi…

As usual, François Truffaut knew exactly what made a great film great. For twenty years, he wrote in 1967, he had been waiting for “the real film” about the Nazi occupation of France, showing the French majority “who were involved neither in t…