The Second Tragic Fantozzi

Aug 9, 2010 — Now that Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb is fifteen years old, it seems pretty safe to say that it has evolved from a potential classic to actually being one. But what kind? A documentary portrait of a comic-book artist, musician, and nerdy...

Mar 23, 2010 — In myriad inventive ways, Terrence Malick’s philosophical drama shows us how nature and culture are always intertwined.

Mar 17, 2010 — 1. A Park—Night A man aflame is running directly toward camera. This image, which comes from Nicholas Ray’s initial treatment for Rebel Without a Cause, might stand at the head of almost any of Ray’s movies, since it so clearly...

Aug 28, 2006 — Pietro Germi’s brilliant satire skewers Italian society’s devotion to appearances and its cultlike obsession with gossip and honor.

Jun 13, 2005 — Ernst Lubitsch was a big-city director. The historical dramas that he made in Germany in the late 1910s and early 1920s were known around the world for their distinctively urbane approach, focusing on the private lives of public people. This...

Sep 29, 2003 — In May 1981, in the midst of shooting Lola, Rainer Werner Fassbinder sketched out his next film project: Sybille Schmitz. On the cover, he had written, “Story for a Feature Film*.” The asterisk pointed to this footnote: “It is possible...

May 6, 2026 — Erige Sehiri’s Promised Sky opens the New York African Film Festival and screens as part of Seattle’s African Pictures program.

Jul 23, 2024 — Chen Kaige’s sweeping epic chronicles the history of twentieth-century China through the story of two childhood friends, contrasting the unchanging traditions of their Beijing-opera milieu with the nation’s swift and turbulent transformation.

Apr 26, 2022 — The Sydney-based festival of new restorations offers a rich set of globally accessible program notes.

Nov 17, 2021 — Decades after Peter Lorre’s knife-toting creep Hans Beckert prowled the Berlin streets in search of little girls in Fritz Lang’s M (1931); after Robert Mitchum’s silver-tongued Harry Powell cut down all the “smooth and curly-haired things” he could get his...