Out of Life

Jul 30, 2013 — Guillermo del Toro’s ghostly fable beautifully reflects the director’s fascination with the personal and the political.

Jul 23, 2013 — Asked by French journalists in a 2001 interview what recent films he most admired, Brian De Palma named Ang Lee’s 1997 The Ice Storm. It was surprising to hear one of the leaders of a filmmaking revolution that aimed at...

Jul 3, 2013 — PerformancesIn Rosemary’s Baby, one of the first exclamations that Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon) makes on hearing the news that her young neighbor Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is expecting a little bundle of joy is “I can’t wait to tell Laura-Louise!” Earlier,...

Jun 25, 2013 — How Claude Lanzmann made a thoughtful film about the unthinkable and unfilmable.

Jun 17, 2013 — The silent legend practices slapstick with clockwork precision in his most iconic, astonishing comedy.

Jun 5, 2013 — Remembering special effects legend Ray Harryhausen, who is being celebrated at the Aero Theatre in L.A. this month.

May 14, 2013 — Delmer Daves’s classic western is psychologically probing, magnificently shot, and fascinatingly ambiguous.

Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...

Apr 4, 2013 — 1. Director Robert Bresson originally titled his screenplay Aide-toi . . ., a reference to the French expression “Aide-toi et le ciel t’aidera” (“Heaven helps those who help themselves”). He ultimately decided instead to use the title Devigny’s journalistic account of his...

Mar 18, 2013 — Using a 1958 murder spree as a narrative springboard, Terrence Malick fashioned a fractured fairy tale about American innocence lost.