Men in Black

Apr 2, 2017 — What defines noir acting? In her latest Dark Passages column, Imogen Sara Smith examines the stylistic variety in some of the genre’s most iconic male performances, including Burt Lancaster in The Killers and Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly.

Feb 20, 2017 — Joan Crawford delivers one of her greatest performances in Michael Curtiz’s unsparing look at class, ambition, and the all-consuming intensity of maternal love.

Jan 19, 2017 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays a working-class gay man hoodwinked by his uppity bourgeois lover in this unsparing portrait of queer culture in 1970s West Germany.

Jul 20, 2016 — In his staggeringly ambitious masterwork A Touch of Zen, Chinese filmmaker King Hu imbues dynamic scenes of combat with balletic grace and audacious stylistic experimentation.

Jan 21, 2016 — In Gilda, Charles Vidor’s “violent, sexual, chaotic” noir, the director focused on Rita Hayworth’s skills as an actor and a dancer, eliciting a performance that became iconic in its own right and made her an international superstar.

Oct 13, 2015 — Divorce wreaks a particularly devastating form of havoc in David Cronenberg's personal take on the dissolution of a marriage.

Jul 17, 2015 — As visually and sociopolitically expansive as it is intimate in its details of a boy’s coming of age, Jan Troell’s film is one of the great cinematic debuts.

Apr 24, 2015 — Atypical in style and subject, Yasujiro Ozu’s early crime dramas show a future master brilliantly experimenting with camera and editing.

May 1, 2014 — When Walter Wanger conceived the movie that would become Riot in Cell Block 11, he wasn’t thinking in terms of pop culture. The longtime independent film producer, with classics (and Criterion releases) such as Stagecoach and Foreign Correspondent to his...

Jun 5, 2013 — Remembering special effects legend Ray Harryhausen, who is being celebrated at the Aero Theatre in L.A. this month.