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May 20, 1991 — In 1941, director Frank Capra was at the peak of his profession with a string of critical and popular successes behind him—next would come his adaptation of a farcical and macabre stage play.

Mar 11, 1991 — The long absent comic essence of the silent era was suddenly revived in the hands of lovable and wildly antic filmmaker Jacques Tati.

Jan 28, 1991 — The following review, one of the most renowned in the history of film criticism, appeared in The New Yorker magazine on October 28, 1972. It is reprinted with the permission of the author, Pauline Kael. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in...

Dec 2, 1990 — In Martin Scorsese’s hands, the camera is not simply a recording device, but an x-ray machine—and it shows us close-ups of the human soul.

Jul 1, 1990 — Molded by Alfred Hitchcock’s direction and David O. Selznick’s editing, the film plays upon the conventions of the Gothic melodrama without ever losing its characters’ humanity.

Dec 18, 1989 — When Tootsie opened in December, 1982, the ad copy read: “In the next 72 hours this desperate, unemployed actor will secretly audition for the female lead of a soap opera.”  That was the plot line to the movie even when...

Dec 18, 1989 — Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musical was the first to present a panoramic history of America from the Mississippi levees of the 1880s to the Broadway of the 1920s.

Sep 4, 1989 — Unintentionally, Jean Renoir’s India-set drama had become an early example of the dissolution of plot critics would hail ten years later in L’avventura.

Apr 3, 1989 — If the notion of “fiftes science-fiction films” conjures up pictures of scantily clad women defending their virtue against rubber-suited aliens, it is not for want of exceptions. MGM’s Forbidden Planet remains the most remarkable of these, a glossy, relatively high-budget...

Nov 14, 1988 — It is sometimes as important to be in touch with the truths of your own time as it is to be in touch with its metaphors. 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most influential films ever made, constructed a...