Stand by Me

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...

Dec 1, 2009 — The deeply disturbing drama of this landmark documentary about the Rolling Stones sprang from the disturbing drama of the times.

Sep 28, 2016 — The salacious sixties phenomenon of the Dirty Book made its way to the big screen in this adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s best seller.

Feb 28, 2014 — Other first films exude the sparkling joy of filmmaking that one feels in Breathless, but how many can boast its sure-handedness?

Aug 24, 2010 — T he Docks of New York is one of those orphaned silents, released in 1928, the very end of the era. Apparently, it was previewed the same week as Al Jolson’s The Singing Fool, his first “all-talking” picture, the follow-up...

Mar 25, 2025 — Unfettered by the precepts of bourgeois morality and the nuclear family, the characters in Alan Rudolph’s romantic drama struggle to find happiness as they navigate love’s whims and ambiguities.

May 24, 2024 — During a period of seismic change in U.S. history, the Hollywood studio system began to fracture beyond repair, resulting in a new freedom in how movies explored themes of violence, psychosis, and social breakdown.

Sep 28, 2022 — Cameroonian director Dikongué-Pipa’s debut feature is both a manifesto on cinema’s capacity to bring about social change and a celebration of love and its possibilities.

Nov 19, 2020 — For most of my life, makeover sequences in film comedies held an irresistible allure. The mousy young woman who realizes her own inner and outer (but mostly outer) beauty after receiving the attentions of the right man (or the right...

Oct 27, 2023 — We’re revisiting Infernal Affairs, Lisandro Alonso’s Los muertos, and some of the first reviews posted at Reverse Shot.