The Watch

Jan 24, 2020 — All six feet two of Burt Lancaster is spread out next to Deborah Kerr as they kiss each other on the beach in From Here to Eternity (1953). This is one of the most famous movie love scenes, parodied and copied many...

Jan 8, 2020 — When it comes to building a genuine relationship between characters on-screen, how do you capture the feeling of a shared history? How much begins with what’s written on the page, and how much relies on the chemistry between actors or...

Nov 12, 2019 — Thai filmmaker Sorayos Prapapan’s Death of the Sound Man begins with a black screen accompanied by the mysterious but unmistakably sexual sound of someone slurping. Shortly after, the first shot reveals a young man in a sound booth fellating a...

Aug 2, 2019 — Extraordinarily long movies, challenging movies, and even ugly movies figure into this week’s round.

Mar 18, 2019 — One Scene When Jia Zhangke made his 1997 feature debut, Xiao Wu, he was rebelling against decades of tradition that had drawn a hard line between cinema and reality. Chinese film history is rooted in genres found in classical theater...

Feb 19, 2019 — A master at adapting literary classics for the screen, Luchino Visconti made a bold choice in emphasizing the homoerotic undertones in Thomas Mann’s novella.

Jan 18, 2019 — Dark Passages Getting old, in Hollywood, is at least a misfortune, if not a crime. But film noir had plenty of room for actors who looked the worse for wear, whose mileage showed on their faces, whose youth was less...

Nov 19, 2018 — Billy Wilder proves himself one of cinema’s greatest pleasure seekers in this irresistible confection, a landmark of Hollywood comedy.

Oct 18, 2018 — An autumnal round of reviews, excerpts, interviews, and news.

Apr 2, 2018 — Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey saw its world premiere on this day, April 2, in 1968 at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. Two days later, it opened in two more theaters, one in Hollywood and one in New...