The Life of an Actor

May 28, 2017 — The jury for the 70th Cannes Film Festival—Pedro Almodóvar (president), Maren Ade, Jessica Chastain, Fan Bingbing, Agnès Jaoui, Park Chan-wook, Will Smith, Paolo Sorrentino, and Gabriel Yared—has presented this year’s Palme d’Or to Ruben Östlund’s The Square.A special 70th Anniversary...

Aug 11, 2020 — I’ve often found that the most successful short films and short stories apply what Ernest Hemingway called the “iceberg theory,” distilling a larger narrative into a very specific moment that allows audiences to infer the bigger picture in their own...

Apr 9, 2018 — “Most famous for the exquisite 1979 family classic The Black Stallion, and, to a slightly lesser extent, 1996’s Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin-starring drama Far Away Home, [Carroll] Ballard is—despite making only six films in a period of almost forty...

Jan 26, 2018 — Death has been greedy this week, taking not only artists who have left their mark on cinema but others, too, who have made an impact on our culture overall. The week began with the passing on Monday of Ursula K....

Dec 12, 2017 — “Grant Munro, a Winnipeg filmmaker whom the National Film Board calls a ‘Canadian film and animation legend,’ has died at the age of ninety-four,” reports Debra Yeo for the Toronto Star. Munro is probably best known for appearing in Norman...

Sep 5, 2017 — Writing for Screen, Jonathan Romney takes on the latest film by Stephen Frears: “Judi Dench as a weary Queen Victoria whose joie de vivre is restored by the tender attentions of a devoted servant. . . . Yes indeed, we...

Jun 10, 2017 — On Wednesday, Martin Scorsese, in partnership with the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO, officially launched the African Film Heritage Project. The Film Foundation, founded and chaired by Scorsese, will take part in the restoration of fifty African films....

Feb 24, 2009 — On January 12, French cinema lost one of its truest enablers. Claude Berri was as well-known for his support of cinema, both financial and critical, as he was for his own filmmaking. The actor turned director-writer-producer made twenty-three films (the...

Apr 23, 1990 — Paying little attention to civilized rules of cinema, and with a bit more than one million dollars, Steven Soderbergh expresses all his hidden anxieties in this indie classic.

Oct 2, 2019 — 1. Local Hero was the first film soundtrack that Dire Straits singer and guitarist Mark Knopfler ever composed and performed, and the album was so successful that it reportedly made more money than the film. The final song in the...