The Goumbé of the Young Revelers

Jan 4, 1988 — The Secret Agent (1936) came to life in the prime of Alfred Hitchcock’s British period. It arrived between the popular triumph of The 39 Steps and the box-office rejection of Sabotage, a more daringly downbeat work. Secret Agent partakes of...

Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...

Dec 31, 2000 — Those who felt that Scandinavian cinema had passed into retirement along with Ingmar Bergman should be startled by Insomnia. This immaculately constructed psychological thriller sets a benchmark for other Scandinavian directors to match, and is one of the most unusual...

May 16, 1988 — Prior to the success of Scaramouche in 1952, many in Hollywood felt that the big-budget “swashbuckler” film was no longer a safe investment. While such motion pictures as MGM’s version of The Three Musketeers (directed by George Sidney, 1948) and...

Deborah Young is a film critic and journalist living in Rome. She has written extensively about Italian cinema and is the international film editor of the Hollywood Reporter.

The performer and author sings (literally) the praises of the Tootsie score, talks about Barbra Streisand as a “North Star for anyone unconventional trying to make it in show business,” and shares the moving experience of watching My Beautiful Laundrette...

The actor and author raves about the visual beauty of The Color of Pomegranates, shares his love for Debbie Harry and her performance in Videodrome, and reflects on the formative experience of seeing River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho...

Mexican author Juan Villoro has been a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, and Stanford universities. His books in English are the short-story collection The Guilty, the novel The Reef, the young-adult novel The Wild Book, and God Is Round, a...

Nov 26, 2018 — The legendary filmmaker possessed the greatest speaking voice in American cinema, and The Magnificent Ambersons represents the summit of his work as a vocal actor.

Nov 11, 2016 — This week’s Friday Night Double Feature on the Criterion Channel demonstrates how much suspense a superb director can wring from an intriguing premise without resorting to yelling “boo!” or splashing gore.