The Love Trap

Feb 2, 2024 — The week brings the final issue of Cinema Scope, a revival of Not a Pretty Picture, and a series of films starring Jean Arthur.

Jun 1, 2022 — With his love of dissonance and bold use of dramatic motifs, the Hungarian-born composer Miklós Rózsa popularized a whole new style of film music.

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...

Apr 9, 2021 — Uncovering “The Naked City,” Bruce Goldstein’s scintillating chronicle of The Naked City’s groundbreaking New York location shoot, is more than the best “where-they-filmed-it” doc ever made. As Goldstein wittily traces director Jules Dassin’s Gotham roots and influences, this twenty-three-minute documentary—now...

Oct 23, 2018 — The complicated bond between a pair of identical twins takes center stage in the stylish short film An Act of Love, now playing on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck.

Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?

Oct 15, 2013 — Georges Franju’s masterpiece is the most chilling expression in cinema of our ancient preoccupation with the nature of identity.

Sep 23, 2002 — The theatricality of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller makes the point that psychoanalysis is a sister to cinema rather than a rival.

Jun 7, 1999 — “Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—” “What island is it?” Rainsford asked. “The old charts called it Ship-Trap Island,” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it?” Sailors have a curious dread of...

May 19, 2026 — “My history’s burning up out here,” Ned Racine (William Hurt) tells his lover in the opening minutes of Lawrence Kasdan’s directorial debut, Body Heat (1981). Ned, a small-time attorney and local roué in his South Florida beach town, recognizes the...