The Hero

May 10, 2016 — Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place imbues the conventions of film noir with a subtle, tense vulnerability that lends a naturalistic weight to the film’s powerful emotional impact.

Jan 19, 2016 — Inside Llewyn Davis takes its protagonist on a Hero’s Journey of characteristically Coen-esque proportions—a voyage at turns serious and comic, and framed by an exquisitely curated selection of folk melodies.

May 22, 2015 — A music star burns brightly and flames out beautifully in Mark Rydell’s visceral rock-and-roll film, starring a sensational Bette Midler.

Jul 15, 2014 — Among the brainiest of all horror movies, David Cronenberg’s film goes beyond shock to investigate a disturbing world of psychic mutation.

Jun 2, 2014 — One Scene When I first heard about The Human Condition (1959–61), I was already familiar with director Masaki Kobayashi’s irreverent Harakiri (1962), a favorite film of mine where samurai are scum of the earth and honor is equivalent to dirt....

Jan 11, 2011 — Given the scarcity of information available in the sixties, director Byron Haskin did a remarkable job of representing some of the conditions on our nearest planetary neighbor, nearly a year before the first close-up views of the real Martian surface.

Feb 13, 2006 — John Ford’s biographical drama portrays an imaginary antebellum America with relaxed humor and effortless nostalgic charm while sustaining an underlying note of somber apprehension.

Oct 28, 2025 — An adaptation of a classic pulp novel by William Lindsay Gresham, Guillermo del Toro’s first foray into film noir is an intensely evocative exploration of how human impulses can give rise to monsters.

Apr 25, 2023 — Steve McQueen’s monumental, five-film portrait of London’s West Indian community is a howl of endorsement for political resistance and a vivid indictment of institutional malaise.

Mar 17, 2020 — Released in, or rather let loose upon, the first year of the new millennium, Spike Lee’s febrile and ferocious media satire Bamboozled—the fifteenth feature-length “joint” of a prolific career—found its writer-director in an unflinching mode and an unforgiving mood. According...