The Big 4

Apr 12, 2016 — Howard Hawks’s 1939 aviation classic Only Angels Have Wings is an exemplar of the auteurist Hollywood entertainer’s capability to fuse “a personal existential statement and a delightful piece of showmanship.”

Aug 24, 2015 — As part of a wide-ranging new interview for New York magazine, über-cinephile and genre master Quentin Tarantino reflects thoughtfully on the western’s mutable qualities and how it has always revealed something about its times: “The westerns of the ’50s reflected...

Dec 12, 2013 — Repertory PicksElia Kazan’s On the Waterfront is the kind of movie one might call the whole package: gripping storytelling, evocative cinematography that captures a sense of time and place, a sensational score, and, of course, amazing performances, topped by an...

Dec 11, 2012 — The climate change expert discusses how Godfrey Reggio’s films presaged widespread concern about global warming and warned about the dangers of consumerism.

Jun 27, 2011 — A rogue’s gallery of vituperative 1950s vixens and night-world tough-guy gargoyles all coalescing in a constellation of twinkling cold war lights, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is a film of a thousand stars. Stars of every sort, size, and description:...

Oct 9, 2020 — In the summer of 2020, I spoke with Philippe Garnier about his book Scoundrels & Spitballers: Writers and Hollywood in the 1930s, available for the first time in English from Eddie Muller’s Black Pool Productions. The book introduces a rogues’...

Mar 17, 2017 — A cornerstone of Taiwanese cinema, Edward Yang’s 1985 sophomore feature, Taipei Story, makes its U.S. theatrical premiere today at Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek. Screening in a new 4K restoration undertaken by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, this slow-burning portrait of urban...

Mar 17, 2016 — Repertory Picks This weekend, Row House Cinema will launch the first-ever Pittsburgh Japanese Film Festival, featuring four diverse films by some of Japan’s most beloved filmmakers—including Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. Among the films screening during the festival is Ozu’s...

Oct 16, 2014 — This past August, on the occasion of Volker Schlöndorff’s being selected for a Silver Medallion award by the Telluride Film Festival, Criterion’s Peter Becker talked with the German filmmaker about his long career. A short version of the conversation was...

Sep 16, 2014 — The following interview is from filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s 1997 book Lynch on Lynch. The interviews in the book were conducted by Rodley between January 1993 and December 1996. Eraserhead took five years to complete. You must have been...