My Beautiful Laundrette: Postcolonialism in the Wash
Stephen Frears brings a playful and shimmering cinematic quality to Hanif Kureishi’s multilayered script about a Pakistani immigrant community in Margaret Thatcher–era London.
Kes: Winged Hope
The Last Picture Show: In With the Old
The Hit: Road to Nowhere
Charles Laughton: Size Matters
“Let me have men about me that are fat.” —Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 2 Just as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe admired small, brave men who stick to their principles, I like—in the movies at least—heavyset, flamboyant types who walk a
…The Man Who Fell to Earth: Loving the Alien
Science-fiction drama, western, love story, metaphysical mystery, satire of modern America—The Man Who Fell to Earth is the most beguiling of the films that, in a dozen years embracing the 1970s, established Nicolas Roeg as a mainstream heir to suc
…Walker: Apocalypse When?
At the climax of Alex Cox’s Walker (1987), a helicopter descends from the night sky onto a plaza where the colonial buildings are ablaze and an army of mercenaries is disintegrating. The chopper disgorges trigger-happy American combat troops and a
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