Man of the Story

Mar 13, 2012 — In the becalmed atmosphere of today’s Hollywood, it’s hard to imagine the tumult that greeted The Last Temptation of Christ when it was released in 1988. Brilliantly directed by Martin Scorsese, this adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s imaginative retelling of the...

Aug 23, 2011 — Intimidation: The Weird Dream MakerImpassioned and dedicated craftsman of some of Japanese cinema’s biggest box-office successes and most eccentric off-genre sorties, longtime Nikkatsu studios mainstay Koreyoshi Kurahara (1927–2002) was a filmmaker with two opposite yet inseparable signature points of view....

Feb 22, 2011 — It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deeply. And...

Oct 19, 2010 — Clock­ing in at three hours and twenty-seven minutes, Seven Samurai’s lengthy runtime underscores the endurance of the samurai lifestyle, its toils and struggles.

Nov 2, 2009 — The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!—Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first it’s not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a...

Jul 21, 2008 — A dreamy alternative to the standard notion of horror, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s phantasmal film reimagined the figure of the vampire.

May 21, 2007 — Carol Reed’s masterpiece dives deep into the life and mind of screenwriter Graham Greene, one of Britain’s greatest postwar novelist.

Oct 15, 2001 — The French director’s crime film conveys both the flow and the form of the prison experience.

Jul 9, 2001 — With its dunderhead millionaires, erudite bums, effulgently dysfunctional families, and beneficent providence, My Man Godfrey is the Depression comedy par excellence. It is also, superficially at least, a movie about the Depression. A suicidal millionaire regains his zest for living...

Oct 19, 2026 — Classics of highway horror like The Hitcher, The Appointment, and Race with the Devil present the open road as a dangerous landscape and automobiles as single-minded killing machines.