The First King

Feb 23, 2016 — Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution.

Jan 21, 2016 — In Gilda, Charles Vidor’s “violent, sexual, chaotic” noir, the director focused on Rita Hayworth’s skills as an actor and a dancer, eliciting a performance that became iconic in its own right and made her an international superstar.

Nov 4, 2015 — Linklater circa 1990 In 1985, six years before the release of Slacker, Richard Linklater's iconic portrait of a generation, the Texan filmmaker founded the Austin Film Society. The group began as a small band of cinephiles eager to see classic,...

Sep 24, 2015 — Bruce Beresford critiques the British colonialist era in this precise, layered adaptation of a 1939 novel by Joyce Cary.

Jul 14, 2015 — Carroll Ballard’s film is a work of rapture, a mesmerizing adventure that envelops the viewer in the beauties of the natural world.

Jul 6, 2015 — The Killers (1946) is exemplary film noir from Robert Siodmak, who, on the strength of three films—this, Phantom Lady (1944), and Criss Cross (1949)—stands beside his fellow European exiles Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger as one of noir’s crucial directors....

Mar 25, 2015 — Long unheralded and at last rediscovered, actor-director Robert Montgomery’s Ride the Pink Horse is one of the key Hollywood features of 1947, the year film noir flooded the screen like a ruptured reservoir of India ink. Adapted from the popular...

Jan 28, 2014 — Terence Davies beckons the viewer into a private world of moods and sensations with this exquisite childhood reverie.

Nov 11, 2013 — A boldly silent film in the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece has a grace that has never been equaled.

Mar 13, 2013 — The slimiest movie monster of them all is part of—and perfects—a great tradition of unstoppable outer-space invaders.