Tricks

Mar 24, 2014 — Rome is as exquisite as it is suffocating in Paolo Sorrentino’s profound tale of contemporary entropy.

Jan 10, 2014 — It’s impossible to watch the unforgettable climax of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and not wonder, How’d they do that? Spoilers ahead: In the scene, Toshiro Mifune’s ruthless warrior, modeled on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, finally gets his comeuppance in the form...

Oct 7, 2013 — René Clair, Fredric March, and Veronica Lake cast sensational spells in this screwball supernatural treat.

Sep 10, 2013 — Martin Ritt’s 1965 movie of John le Carré’s first great novel (and first best seller), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, declares “a plague on all your houses” to capitalists, Communists, and ruthless intelligence operatives. It’s one espionage...

Jul 23, 2013 — Asked by French journalists in a 2001 interview what recent films he most admired, Brian De Palma named Ang Lee’s 1997 The Ice Storm. It was surprising to hear one of the leaders of a filmmaking revolution that aimed at...

Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...

Dec 5, 2012 — The following is excerpted from an interview that originally appeared in the February 1, 1981, issue of L’avant-scène: Cinéma. It was conducted by Olivier Eyquem and Jean-Claude Missiaen. Eyquem is a documentalist and former staff member at Positif; he blogs...

Sep 25, 2012 — No mere jigsaw movie, David Fincher’s thriller is also a nuanced character study, a satire of corporate culture, and a film about filmmaking.

Jul 6, 2012 — Samuel Fuller wrote this extraordinary “interview” piece shortly after White Dog was completed. It appeared in issue 19 of the journal Framework in 1982, with this introduction: “The director of Paramount’s White Dog interviewed the title actor of the movie...

Jun 27, 2012 — The warrior and philosopher protagonist of The Samurai Trilogy, Musashi Miyamoto, was a real-life seventeenth-century figure. Here, the translator of Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings tells us about this fascinating man and his principles of swordplay and spirituality.