Paul Swan

Jun 27, 2017 — On what would have been his seventy-sixth birthday, we look back at the incandescent, richly cinematic reveries of one of the most acclaimed Polish filmmakers of his generation.

Nov 15, 2016 — Akira Kurosawa lays bare his deepest fears in this visually astonishing interpretation of folklore, myth, and the director’s own dreams and memories.

Feb 16, 2016 — In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima spins a complex aesthetic web around his documentary-like structure, packing detail, history, politics, and emotion into his surrealist inquiry into capital punishment.

Jun 27, 2011 — A rogue’s gallery of vituperative 1950s vixens and night-world tough-guy gargoyles all coalescing in a constellation of twinkling cold war lights, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is a film of a thousand stars. Stars of every sort, size, and description:...

Jan 18, 2011 — In his Life Studies poem “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage,” Robert Lowell wrote of “free-lancing out along the razor’s edge,” a lean, glamorous, tense phrasing that invokes the Samuel Fuller of the early sixties—a director suddenly without...

Aug 15, 2025 — Julia Loktev issues an urgent warning and Paul Thomas Anderson makes an action movie.

Jul 11, 2025 — This week: A new Paul Vecchiali restoration, late revisions from P. Adams Sitney, and Charli XCX on Jacques Rivette.

May 13, 2024 — Among this month’s highlights are a bustling summer barbecue of amply peopled movies full of unforgettable performances, a collection of films with great synth soundtracks, and Adventures in Moviegoing with Paul Schrader.

May 5, 2026 — The nation’s largest silent film festival returns to the newly renovated Castro Theatre.

Apr 21, 2026 — From new titles on the silent era and Hollywood’s Golden Age to forthcoming novels and memoirs, this month offers something for every reader.