High Tension

Oct 13, 2015 — Divorce wreaks a particularly devastating form of havoc in David Cronenberg's personal take on the dissolution of a marriage.

Sep 8, 2015 — Brian De Palma magnifies the pleasures and perils of Hitchcock and toys with the viewer’s spectatorship in his sly and scary horror masterpiece.

Jul 22, 2015 — Stephen Frears brings a playful and shimmering cinematic quality to Hanif Kureishi’s multilayered script about a Pakistani immigrant community in Margaret Thatcher–era London.

Mar 24, 2015 — Words—they conceal and reveal so much about us, as Errol Morris’s elusive and brilliant first films attest.

Dec 9, 2014 — Liliana Cavani’s tale of the sadomasochistic bond between an ex-SS officer and a former concentration camp prisoner is a transgressive take on history and fascism.

Oct 14, 2014 — What happens offscreen is as important as what’s on- in John Ford’s subtle, elegiac take on the Wyatt Earp–Doc Holliday story.

Jul 22, 2014 — Jeanne Moreau’s flighty, enigmatic Jackie in Jacques Demy’s poetic drama is in the great tradition of dreamy Demy heroines.

Jun 20, 2014 — Peter Weir’s sun-dappled, sexually charged nightmare about a disappearance in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australia still unnerves due to its radical lack of resolution.

Jan 15, 2013 — Despite the acclaim, Volker Schlöndorff always felt his adaptation of Günter Grass’s novel was incomplete. Thirty years later, he set to work on his director’s cut.

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...