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Aug 18, 2011 — Stanley Kubrick’s labyrinthine 1956 heist flick The Killing—an exploded rethink of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and eventual template for the narrative convolutions of Reservoir Dog—became an instant facet in the jewel that was film noir, even as it refracted...

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:...

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...

Apr 11, 2011 — I believe in my world. I believe in brotherhood and everything that goes with it. Like honor, loyalty, and friendship. The reason why Le cercle rouge is a classic gangster film is because it embodies this kind of romanticism. For...

Feb 22, 2011 — Andrea Arnold seemed to emerge out of nowhere with Red Road (2006), her revelatory, shrewdly observed debut feature about voyeurism and sexual revenge. That film won Arnold multiple awards, and she had already earned an Oscar for her short Wasp...

Jan 11, 2011 — His most personal film as well as the final one to deal with the German occupation of France, Jean-Pierre Melville’s thriller showcases human consciousness grappling with mortality.

Dec 13, 2010 — If you’ve read Faber & Faber’s 1998 publication of the Sweet Smell of Success screenplay, you already know from the book’s afterword that director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted; Walk the Line) studied under the late filmmaker Alexander Mackendrick in the...

Dec 7, 2010 — Guillermo del Toro understands the power of fairy tales. Not the prettified romances of Charles Perrault, who tamed the Brothers Grimm for French drawing rooms, or the charming animal fables of Aesop, or the reassuring moral lessons Disney made of...

Nov 30, 2010 — Some things those of us who work at the Criterion Collection are serious about: movies (maybe you knew that), getting the details right, and eating and drinking. So when the recipes for the absurdly delicious-looking food the Yokoyamas prepare in...

Nov 23, 2010 — Easy Rider is a record of a certain time in American history, and a chronicle of a culture clash that never quite ended.