† This is the Life

Nov 19, 2015 — There’s no better time than a crisp Sunday evening in November to cozy up and take in a spooky Victorian ghost story. This weekend, if you’re in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, you can do just that.

Nov 18, 2015 — Richard Brooks’s In Cold Blood applied cinematic specificity and flair to the literary realism of Truman Capote’s classic “nonfiction novel.”

Aug 3, 2015 — On film noir’s unparalleled roster of resonant titles—Kiss of Death, Out of the Past, and Where Danger Lives, to name three—none is more emblematic or iconographically cogent than Night and the City. Juxtaposing two of noir’s essential, virtually ontological qualities,...

Jun 16, 2014 — Georges Franju evokes the surreal silent serials of Louis Feuillade while constructing his own personal cinematic paradise.

Jul 25, 2013 — The look of the dazzlingly evocative The Ice Storm is in large part the work of production designer extraordinaire Mark Friedberg (Far from Heaven, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). In an illustrated audio interview on release of Ang Lee’s...

Nov 20, 2012 — For a brief, shining moment, the genteel Japanese studio mutated into a fun house of grim ghouls and slimy aliens.

Sep 25, 2012 — No mere jigsaw movie, David Fincher’s thriller is also a nuanced character study, a satire of corporate culture, and a film about filmmaking.

May 29, 2012 — A watershed film in Bergman’s career, this tale of a woman caught between the past and present is a masterful study in darkness and light.

Apr 13, 2012 — Performances Fists in the Pocket, a gasp-inducing, mouth-frothing, black-comic attack on bourgeois values, is remembered first and foremost as a shocking debut from director Marco Bellocchio. But it gave its star, Lou Castel, a memorable entrance of his own: he...

Feb 24, 2012 — The writer reflects on the decades-long creative collaboration and friendship between his father, playwright and television writer Elihu Winer, and John Voelker, judge and author.