Shock

Jul 9, 2007 — The names Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kobo Abe, and Toru Takemitsu loom large among Japanese intellectuals of the late twentieth century. Each in his own right was an artist of peculiar genius, each resisting easy classification in conventional categories: Teshigahara as filmmaker,...

Nov 27, 2006 — Centered on the destruction wrought by unbridled female eros, Pandora’s Box would, in its shockingly modern, instinct-driven psychology, end up defining both its director and its star.

Mar 10, 2003 — The Swedish director of I Am Curious explains how he fused the themes of eroticism, self-exploration, voyeurism, and nonviolence into a film about the new freedoms of the young. QUESTION: I Am Curious seemed to be a cinematic Tristram Shandy,...

Sep 23, 1991 — Hal Ashby’s witty post-Nixon comedy shocked viewers in 1975 with its sexual activity and the taboo-breaking language.

The actor, comedian, and writer praises John Waters as a “timeless shocker;” shares his desire for more great nightlife movies like The Last Days of Disco; and reflects on the beauty of Robby Müller’s cinematography.

Oct 24, 2025 — This French art-horror master shocked audiences with a string of sexy vampire movies often centered on complex female friendships and women-ruled fantasy worlds.

Aug 13, 2024 — This month brings riveting courtroom dramas, New American Cinema classics, giallo shockers, pre-Code gems by women screenwriters, and a new episode of Adventures in Moviegoing.

Dec 21, 2017 — In this excerpt from an interview on our edition of The Piano Teacher, the Austrian director discusses the mechanics of one of the film’s most shocking sequences.

Sep 26, 2017 — The sexual pedagogy of a masochistic music instructor takes center stage in this shocking study of art, control, and repression.

May 29, 2015 — A shocking chapter of Soviet Czechoslovakian history is dramatized in Costa-Gavras’s controversial follow-up to Z.