The Stories

Dec 2, 2013 — With its dazzling array of characters, acerbic take on American entertainment and politics, and innovative approach to sound, this is the ultimate Robert Altman movie.

Sep 17, 2013 — The author sheds some light on the fascinating life of the American scriptwriter behind Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan.

Aug 20, 2013 — Satyajit Ray’s delicate masterpiece about forbidden love in the late nineteenth century is lovingly adapted from a novella by the great Rabindranath Tagore.

Jun 19, 2013 — Disorienting, brutal, and bloody beautiful, František Vláčil’s epic is a dark medieval vision teeming with cinematic invention.

May 15, 2013 — Delmer Daves’s 3:10 to Yuma, driven by compelling mano a mano suspense, is quite a yarn. It’s no surprise, then, that it’s based on a story by the estimable Elmore Leonard. Known predominantly for his crime fiction such as Get...

Dec 5, 2012 — The following is excerpted from an interview that originally appeared in the February 1, 1981, issue of L’avant-scène: Cinéma. It was conducted by Olivier Eyquem and Jean-Claude Missiaen. Eyquem is a documentalist and former staff member at Positif; he blogs...

Nov 6, 2012 — When Akira Kurosawa made Rashomon (1950), he was a forty-year-old director working near the beginning of a career that would last fifty years, produce some of the greatest films ever made, and exert a tremendous and lasting influence on filmmaking...

Aug 28, 2012 — The boy Quadrophenia’s Jimmy was based on (or was he?) talks to us about the mod life.

Aug 14, 2012 — The Dardennes threw down the gauntlet for a new type of unadorned dramatic storytelling with their breakthrough tale of a working-class boy’s fraught coming-of-age.

Apr 20, 2012 — Cabbage soup for the soul.