Movie Movie

May 11, 2009 — Novelists learn not to expect too much when their books are made into movies. Obviously, great fiction has been turned into great cinema, but the dents and scrapes that so many classics have sustained on the rocky road from the...

May 6, 2009 — Götz Spielmann’s tour de force dark tragedy Revanche has received a slew of great notices, but we’re particularly partial to Ella Taylor’s highly perceptive examination of the new Janus release on NPR’s website, where she zeros in on the characters’...

May 5, 2009 — Every second of David Fincher’s uncanny drama—every shot and every cut, every gesture and every facial expression, every turn in its narrative and every visual effect—is devoted to the contemplation of time’s passing.

May 4, 2009 — John Cassavetes’ Faces is certainly a movie to shout about . . . and maybe sing and laugh and cry and bray and tell bad jokes about, too. In a new article titled “Essential Cassavetes,” Slate film critic Dana Stevens...

Apr 28, 2009 — When science fiction guru Forrest J Ackerman died last December, he was remembered for many firsts. Born November 24, 1916, Ackerman (known as Forry by fans and friends) purchased his first science fiction magazine in 1926. He founded the first...

Apr 27, 2009 — Stephen Frears’s gangland drama subverts its genre by removing its villains to an alternate mythic universe, that of the western, as its protagonists traverse the roads that snake through Spain’s arid hills and plains.

Apr 27, 2009 — The idea of making a film about Japan’s most famous sex crime, with a decent budget and in conditions of complete freedom, reawakened Nagisa Oshima’s desire to direct—and the prospect of circumventing Japanese censorship must have made the decision even...

Apr 26, 2009 — The British film magazine Sight & Sound dedicates its May issue to the fiftieth anniversary of the French New Wave, which it dates to the first screening of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (on May 4, 1959, at the Cannes...

Apr 21, 2009 — That’s how the always cheeky (and clickable!) folks at Very Short List mapped out Stephen Frears’s sun-drenched but blood-chilling early crime thriller The Hit in their e-mail offering yesterday touting Criterion’s upcoming release. “A great lost ’80s thriller, rediscovered,” they...

Apr 16, 2009 — If you’re feeling symptoms of Edie-itis lately—wearing sweaters and towels as kerchiefs, doing impromptu soft-shoes around the house, unexpectedly calling your mom “Mothuh, dahling”—don’t worry, you’re not alone. Something is definitely in the air.Staunch fans of the Maysles brothers’ 1976...