The Drama

May 14, 2019 — It all comes down to that first wink. About half an hour through Michael Haneke’s 1997 cause célèbre Funny Games, Paul (Arno Frisch), one of the two politely psychotic young home invaders who’ve taken a family captive, leads one of his...

Dec 1, 2016 — Repertory PicksSince September, the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive has been honoring the great Italian actor Anna Magnani with a career-spanning retrospective of her work. This Saturday, the series continues with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1962 sophomore feature, Mamma...

Nov 18, 2013 — When Tokyo Story was released in late 1953, Western audiences were just being exposed to Japanese cinema. Akira Kurosawa had made his breakthrough with Rashomon three years earlier, and Kenji Mizoguchi was moving to the forefront of the international festival...

Mar 27, 2012 — Written in five or six days in 1941, in a seaside hotel where he had gone to get away from the Blitz, and by all accounts scarcely revised before being mounted some six weeks later, Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit became...

Jun 13, 2005 — Ernst Lubitsch was a big-city director. The historical dramas that he made in Germany in the late 1910s and early 1920s were known around the world for their distinctively urbane approach, focusing on the private lives of public people. This...

Feb 19, 2018 — Jonathan Demme put an uncompromisingly feminist spin on the law-enforcement procedural with this wildly successful, Oscar-winning drama.

May 6, 2020 — Kleber Mendonça Filho began his career as a film critic and journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, as well as for his own site, CinemaScópio.As a director, he experimented with fiction, documentary, and video clips in the 1990s. He migrated...

The singer shares her love for The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and its decadent drama, praises Nicole Kidman’s hilariously psychotic performance in To Die For, and talks about the intimate dream state of Brand upon the Brain!

Mar 18, 2024 — Among this month’s highlights are a collection of noir classics from the genre’s peak year, a Jean Eustache retrospective, and our favorite movies that unfold within a tight timespan between dusk and dawn.

Apr 27, 2018 — A survey of the films in this year’s Cannes competition lineup and predictions of what will take home the top prize.