Christmas On Call

Jan 19, 2018 — Before we turn to the features and series that haven’t been made yet, we’ve got two items worth making note of here. First, as Wellesnet editor Ray Kelly reports, “The Other Side of the Wind had its first screening on...

Dec 27, 2017 — Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve lost some writers who’ve made unique contributions to film criticism. At Film Studies for Free, Catherine Grant has posted an entry in memory of “radical film and media scholar” Chuck Kleinhans. “Along with...

Nov 28, 2017 — Ahead of the Christmas Day opening, preview screenings of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread in New York and Los Angeles began over the weekend and will continue through Thursday. Variety’s Kristopher Tapley suggests that “if you define a film as...

Nov 25, 2015 — Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film about one man’s mortality offers a study in postwar Japan, Kurosawa vs. Ozu, and the realization that knowing how to die requires learning how to be alive.

Nov 17, 2014 — Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable’s effortless banter is pure magic, but Frank Capra’s comedy is rooted in the reality of the times.

Jul 29, 2014 — The writer and director is inspired by Lawrence Kasdan’s classic comic drama to consider the joys and disappointments of the baby boomer generation that begot her.

Jun 25, 2012 — For this Edinburgh-based writer and filmmaker, Hitchcock’s Scottish caper is both fantasy and reality.

Nov 8, 2011 — Upon its release in the U.S. in 1983, the theatrical version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander generated a wealth of controversy. Bergman has always seemed to breed conflict among cineastes (Phillip Lopate, for example, has written recently about the...

Aug 30, 2011 — A startling blend of fantasy and reality, Lindsay Anderson’s satirical tale of adolescent rebellion personifies the 1960s.

Jul 19, 2010 — “It is the most erotic film that I have ever made,” wrote Michael Powell of Black Narcissus. “It is all done by suggestion, but eroticism is in every frame and image, from the beginning to the end.”