The Dark Side of Love

Jan 31, 2005 — Like the movie’s rattletrap trucks lurching down the highway as they carry way-too-heavy loads, the characters in Jules Dassin’s brilliantly volatile Thieves’ Highway struggle under psychological and moral baggage until they can lay their burdens down. Working from a novel...

Jul 25, 2023 — A master class in dramatic tension and pacing, Carl Franklin’s neonoir masterpiece explores the desperate energy and desperate deeds that fuel real crime.

Jul 18, 2011 — Out of the extravagant variety of Jean Cocteau’s work—the paintings and drawings, the poems, the plays and novels and memoirs, the opera librettos and ballet scenarios—it is likely his films that will have the most enduring influence, and among those,...

Mar 20, 2013 — Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s adroit masterpiece is war film, dark comedy, historical drama, poignant romance, and a portrait of the modern woman.

Jan 20, 2026 — The constant negotiation of routine pleasure and profound sorrow—the experience of being human—is at the heart of John Huston’s final film, an exquisite adaptation of James Joyce’s classic short story.

Jul 25, 2023 — In his five collaborations with actor Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown, Boetticher presents an unsentimental vision of honor-bound men competing and banding together in a desolate landscape ruled by chance.

Dec 15, 2021 — The Film Independent Spirit Awards usher in a fresh round of contenders, while critics across the country vote for their favorites.

Dec 19, 2019 — Lists (of course), but also philosophical surveys, biographies, and coffee table books are featured in this month’s round.

Jun 24, 2018 — During a period when studios gave him carte blanche, Josef von Sternberg created a sublime cinematic language that shrugged off one orthodoxy after another.

Aug 8, 2017 — This underappreciated highlight of Michael Curtiz’s filmography grapples with postwar disillusionment and marital strife through the prism of a daylight noir.