Something about the North

Aug 9, 2018 — An annual destination for cinephiles from around the world, this film festival in Bologna is a magical place to discover the richness of cinema’s past.

Mar 24, 2015 — Words—they conceal and reveal so much about us, as Errol Morris’s elusive and brilliant first films attest.

Sep 26, 2013 — Roberto Rossellini officially left neorealism behind with his modern masterpiece, an intimate tale of marriage on the rocks.

Oct 16, 2012 — After breaking out with Maria Full of Grace, filmmaker Joshua Marston visited a strange new land with persistent and deadly traditions.

Dec 4, 1995 — While Carol Reed’s psychological noir is the most compassionate of movies, it’s a poetic summary of twentieth century harshness—of what can be called the inhuman condition.

May 27, 2019 — The awards have been presented, the red carpet rolled up, and now we can gather a little perspective on this year’s competition.

Apr 13, 2012 — Performances Fists in the Pocket, a gasp-inducing, mouth-frothing, black-comic attack on bourgeois values, is remembered first and foremost as a shocking debut from director Marco Bellocchio. But it gave its star, Lou Castel, a memorable entrance of his own: he...

Apr 15, 2020 — 1.In 1944, after an intense bidding war, Twentieth Century-Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck acquired the film rights to Ben Ames Williams’s Leave Her to Heaven for $100,000, then an exorbitant price for an unpublished work. Later that year, Williams’s mystery...

May 20, 2009 — Early in Shohei Imamura’s Intentions of Murder, the librarian Riichi distractedly peruses Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization while conversing with his clinging mistress, Yoshiko. One can read the reference in many ways: as a glancing jest, as an (uncharacteristic) Imamurian...

Oct 13, 2016 — From its diffusely structured narrative to its innovative cinematography, this radical western is a showcase for Robert Altman’s iconoclastic style.