The Hard Way

Jul 15, 2020 — When I first saw The Lady Eve (1941), in my teens, I was certain I had never seen a comedy more perfectly constructed, a judgment that the subsequent decades have not revised. I had also seen none more acutely witty,...

Oct 4, 2019 — Artists’ and amateurs’ videos, Ida Lupino, and TIFF Cinematheque programmers’ notes all figure in this week’s round.

Oct 15, 2009 — Our favorite Manitoban, Guy Maddin, cheerfully grim chronicler of storybook psychosexuality and charmingly modest self-mythologizer, is in Paris now for a special event. Though just fifty-three and very much still working, the filmmaker is the subject of a complete career...

Mar 16, 2010 — More than a decade after his death in 1997, the moment is right for the rediscovery of the work of Marco Ferreri. “I think he’s modern. More than modern, in fact,” frequent collaborator Marcello Mastroianni once remarked, encapsulating how far...

Jul 2, 2018 — The sweetness and aggression of female erotic pleasure take center stage in Pussy, an imaginatively stylized animated short now playing on FilmStruck.

Nov 4, 2025 — The director of La commune and The War Game shook up viewers with dramatizations historical conflicts and imminent futures.

Dec 12, 2019 — The National Film Registry adds twenty-five titles, Film Comment lists the best films of 2019, and Vulture critics rank 5,279 movies made in the 2010s.

Mar 26, 2019 — As BAM prepares to present the largest U.S. retrospective yet, we look back on the singular oeuvre.

Jul 25, 2023 — A master class in dramatic tension and pacing, Carl Franklin’s neonoir masterpiece explores the desperate energy and desperate deeds that fuel real crime.

Aug 21, 2019 — One Scene One of my absolute favorite quotes from Douglas Sirk—and he has a million of ’em—was made in reference to Magnificent Obsession. “It is a combination of kitsch and craziness and trashiness,” he said (this isn’t the quote quite...