The Absent

May 11, 2022 — Louis Feuillade’s influential serial Les Vampires reflected the French national subconscious at the time by depicting a madcap world of anarchy and violent spectacle.

May 12, 2008 — This intensely personal work about a self-destructive young man would help alleviate Louis Malle’s doubts about his career.

Jun 1, 2022 — UCLA spotlights a diverse array of American lives depicted in films made between 1984 and 2020.

Sep 17, 2017 — There’s no getting around the loaded real-world context on this one. For the Daily Beast, Richard Porton begins with the “various accusations about [Louis C.K.’s] supposed sexual misconduct, which have been floating around for years since a 2012 Gawker story...

Aug 5, 2013 — For those of us who rank The Earrings of Madame de . . . at the top of our list of all-time favorite films, the mystery is why our passion isn’t universally shared. Every year, thanks to committed revival houses,...

May 9, 2005 — This seminal documentary conveys the particular seductiveness and resonance of the dream of going pro for two talented Chicago teenagers.

Jun 11, 2019 — The problem with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies, everyone agrees, is that there is never enough dancing. You have to wait through often silly plots and hit-or-miss comedy for the musical numbers that are the whole point. But the dances...

Feb 16, 2016 — In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima spins a complex aesthetic web around his documentary-like structure, packing detail, history, politics, and emotion into his surrealist inquiry into capital punishment.

Feb 28, 2011 — In 1969, director Alexander Macken­drick retired from the film industry and became founding dean of the film school at the newly established California Institute of the Arts. Passionately interested in the pedagogy of cinema (“Film writing and directing cannot be...

Jan 23, 2019 — Checking in on how the nominees are currently faring with critics and awards prognosticators.