14’s Good, 18’s Better

Aug 20, 2001 — Carl Dreyer’s modern tragedy eschews melodrama, striking a balance between suffering and triviality.

Jun 4, 2001 — Mad with images of nature in rebellion, Luis Buñuel’s 1964 film is a droll vision of Eden during the Fall starring a sumptuous Jeanne Moreau.

Oct 2, 2000 — The most important of Brian De Palma’s earlier features, Greetings (1968) and Hi, Mom! (1970), resist the commodification of entertainment while charting the development of Jon Rubin (Robert De Niro) from voyeur to filmmaker to urban guerilla. If pictures like...

Sep 18, 2000 — Serving as codirector with Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard found one of the finest roles of his career in this witty adaptation written by George Bernard Shaw.

Aug 28, 2000 — In what is arguably his most popular and enduring feature, W. C. Fields nails the American tendency to inflate one’s importance.

Jun 26, 2000 — Kevin Smith writes about his third feature as a sort of penance/valentine for the woman who made him grow up.

Apr 24, 2000 — When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming. Only the people and places of the dream matter. I have difficulty making contact with others, as one does when half-asleep. If a person is asleep...

Nov 15, 1999 — Michael Powell’s controversial late film makes the cinema spectator’s own voyeurism shockingly obvious.

Jun 21, 1999 — Laurence Olivier’s Henry V today seems like nothing less than a miracle in answer to the Chorus’s call for “a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.” It’s a dazzling adaptation of a Shakespeare play, made...

Apr 26, 1999 — At some point in their lives, probably every sleepless person has switched on the TV in the wee hours of a weekend morning and chanced upon a fishing show. Invariably, a beefy, half-forgotten retired athlete shares a boat with some...