To Be or Not to Be

Jan 13, 2014 — With economy and panache, Michael Mann established his existential crime drama style with this breakthrough first feature.

Jan 7, 2014 — Satyajit Ray was ailing when he made them, but these three works from the great filmmaker’s final years show an artist at the height of his powers.

Dec 16, 2013 — A melodramatic investigation of family and class, Kim Ki-young’s film exorcises some demons of 1960s South Korean society.

Dec 12, 2013 — A beloved filmmaker in India, the Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak digs into his region’s traumatic history in this epic melodrama.

Dec 11, 2013 — This political drama was made in Mexico at a revolutionary moment and represents an extraordinary confluence of international talent.

Dec 10, 2013 — In 1998, I interviewed Little Edie Beale, the surviving star of 1976’s Grey Gardens, one of the Maysles brothers’ numerous masterworks (Gimme Shelter, Meet Marlon Brando, and With Love from Truman are equal in technical and emotional innovation). Miss Beale,...

Nov 5, 2013 — The author’s colorful interactions with the famously crusty filmmaker.

Oct 29, 2013 — In this 1997 interview, the British-born Hollywood director talks about his early career and the making of his most famous film, The Uninvited.

Oct 25, 2013 — "I“m not acting,” stage star Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) tells her bemused director after a violent episode with her ghostly muse in Opening Night. That’s a loaded claim to be making in a movie that so conclusively smudges the line...

Oct 23, 2013 — If there’s one quality that separates John Cassavetes’s movies from almost everybody else’s, it’s the density of detail in the storytelling. His films need to be read closely, from beginning to end. There are no lulls with Cassavetes, no lapses...