The Rock

Dec 11, 1989 — Previous rock-and-roll movies had been little more than showcases for the latest music, aimed at exploiting the youth market, cheaply made and melodramatic—then along came one of the most finely crafted films ever made about rock-and-roll.

May 31, 2022 — Wayne Wang’s breakthrough feature, a milestone in Asian American cinema, is a humorous and intimate snapshot of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Apr 10, 2020 — Songbook Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day is the War and Peace of Taiwanese juvenile-delinquent movies. It is also part of a tradition of films that use the process of a character slowly learning a single song as a narrative-building...

Oct 29, 2019 — Matewan opens in the pitch-black darkness of a West Virginia coal mine. A miner lights the carbide lamp on his helmet. The small open flame he wears provides the only flicker of light in this cramped space next to a...

Mar 7, 2019 — Repertory Picks This year’s SXSW Film Festival kicks off tomorrow, and one of the lineup’s special repertory events is a presentation of True Stories, David Byrne’s first and only feature film, screening next Wednesday in our own 4K restoration with the director...

Jun 4, 2018 — Studio Visits New York–based painter and illustrator Riccardo Vecchio has made a name for himself with his evocative portraits and cityscapes. But for the last few years, he has returned to his Italian roots, devoting himself to depicting the Alpine mountains...

Apr 24, 2017 — Music has always been a central character in the films of Wim Wenders. Ranging from the classic rock of the Kinks in his debut feature, Summer in the City, to the melancholy twang of Ry Cooder’s guitar in Paris, Texas,...

Feb 17, 2017 — In 1970, legendary filmmaker Roger Corman founded New World Pictures, an independent studio that produced and distributed everything from B-movies and exploitation films to acclaimed foreign art-house fare by Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, and Ingmar Bergman. It became a breeding...

Apr 14, 2016 — Repertory PicksThis week, the RiverRun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is hosting a screening of D. A. Pennebaker’s 1968 film Monterey Pop. Playing as part of From the Archives: Rock on Film, a music-themed sidebar to the festival,...

Dec 3, 2014 — “We were just in London, clubbing, all those things people did in the ’60s in the middle of London,” British actor Francesca Annis recalls, in an interview on the new Criterion release of Macbeth, of “crossing paths” with director Roman...