Into the Okavango

Sep 30, 2013 — The author describes his interactions with the great Polish filmmaker.

Jul 23, 2013 — Asked by French journalists in a 2001 interview what recent films he most admired, Brian De Palma named Ang Lee’s 1997 The Ice Storm. It was surprising to hear one of the leaders of a filmmaking revolution that aimed at...

Jun 17, 2013 — The author introduces a new Current series that will feature his reminiscences about his encounters in international cinema circles over the past five-plus decades.

Jun 12, 2013 — Among the special features new to our Blu-ray edition of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries is a remarkable sixteen minutes of silent 16 mm footage filmed by Bergman himself on set. The images provide insight into how certain scenes were shot,...

Apr 22, 2013 — Restoration SpotlightShot in VistaVision and Technicolor, Richard III is the most eye-catching of Laurence Olivier’s essential big-screen Shakespeare adaptations. For years, it couldn’t be seen in its original glory, due to lost footage, faded colors, chemical staining, and missing frames....

Oct 4, 2012 — Louis Malle is remembered primarily as a fiction filmmaker, but he had a parallel career as a documentarian. In fact, he got his start in nonfiction: when he was just twenty-three years old, Malle was given the opportunity to collaborate...

Jun 6, 2012 — A killer breakfast

Jun 20, 2011 — Genres collide in the great Hollywood movies of the mid­fifties cold-war thaw. With the truce in Korea and the red scare on the wane, ambitious directors seemed freer to mix and match and even ponder the new situation. The western...

Nov 27, 2010 — The New Jersey resort town of Atlantic City provides the backdrop for two distinctive films made at opposite ends of the seventies: Bob Rafelson’s 1972 The King of Marvin Gardens and Louis Malle’s Atlantic City, released in 1981. That decade...

Oct 19, 2010 — The themes, symbolism, and aesthetic forms of Akira Kurosawa’s films owe their origins to the ideas and sensibilities that captured his imagination as a young man.