Prisoners

Apr 21, 2014 — A real-life prison uprising inspired this two-fisted tale directed by Don Siegel, who would go on to make many more films about men in extreme situations.

Aug 27, 2013 — Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II–era high-wire act is a profound take on the absurdity cruelty of civilization and a perfect black comedy to boot.

May 14, 2013 — Delmer Daves’s classic western is psychologically probing, magnificently shot, and fascinatingly ambiguous.

Apr 17, 2013 — Four of the great Japanese director’s lesser-known, early films show the coming into being of a political artist.

Mar 25, 2013 — Robert Bresson’s prison-break story is a tale of religious faith and a work of striking purity.

May 22, 2012 — These five films chart the unlikely ascendance of a hero of American underground cinema.

May 16, 2011 — Among the most enduringly popular motives for murder, in films as in life, is the desire to remove an impediment to happiness—to get somebody, once and for all, out of the way. In life, of course, the goal of freeing...

Mar 15, 2011 — The site of Louis Malle’s film Au revoir les enfants was the Petit-Collège d’Avon, a residential prep school located on the grounds of the Carmelite monastery abutting the park of the fabled French palace of Fontainebleau. Malle attended this school...

May 20, 2010 — Driven to Destruction Nagisa Oshima was a destructive force in Japanese cinema—and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Intent on exploding taboos and jabbing the eye of the status quo, he created films that leave us with a...

Apr 28, 2010 — Just over halfway through Ang Lee’s masterful Civil War drama Ride with the Devil, the small group of men at the story’s center, young, Southern-sympathizing Bushwhackers fighting in divided Missouri, meet up with other ragtag bands of rebels. Coalescing under...