The Hit

Dec 12, 2012 — Even with limited resources, Christopher Nolan proved a force to be reckoned with in his thrilling, auspicious debut.

May 24, 2011 — Andrei Tarkovsky belongs to that handful of filmmakers (Dreyer, Bresson, Vigo, Tati) who, with a small, concentrated body of work, created a universe. Though he made only seven features, thwarted by Soviet censors and then by cancer, each honored his...

Jun 21, 2010 — A new man is being born, fraught with all the fears and terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. —Michelangelo Antonioni Red Desert came out in 1964, almost twenty years after the end of the war,...

Nov 2, 2008 — Geoffrey Macnab posts a touching personal tribute to British writer-producer-director Sidney Gilliat, “one of the unsung heroes of British cinema, an extraordinarily versatile figure who wrote and directed rip-roaring thrillers, satirical comedies, and home-front social dramas,” in the Guardian, marking...

Jul 21, 2008 — Carl Theodor Dreyer’s elliptical and dreamlike vampire film defies definitive shots at interpretation.

Feb 1, 1999 — After finishing Diabolique, heralded French director-screenwriter Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907–1977) confessed that all he had intended was to make a picture that would “amuse myself” and please a young girl who hid under the covers and asked her father to frighten...

Jan 18, 2019 — Award-winning cinematographer John Bailey discusses the complications that Alfred Hitchcock faced trying to execute one of the most ambitious shots in his filmography.

The critic and cowriter of Nightmare Alley explores the complexity of Gene Tierney’s femme fatale in Leave Her to Heaven, compares Adam Sandler and Paul Thomas Anderson’s work on Punch-Drunk Love to the collaboration of James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock,...

D. A. Miller, who taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, is most recently the author of Hidden Hitchcock (University of Chicago Press) and Second Time Around: From Art House to DVD (Columbia University Press).

Oct 2, 2025 — In Wes Anderson’s romantic ode to journalism, the director grapples with the danger and horror inherent in any field of endeavor worth pursuing.