The Stranger

Sep 3, 2021 — In the thirty-fifth edition of the Italian festival dedicated to restored films, an eclectic lineup underscores the transportive physicality of cinema after a long year stuck at home.

Jan 29, 2021 — Dark Passages A nightclub floor show with dancers kicking and tapping under a scrim of cigarette smoke and the murmuration of an indifferent crowd. Couples listlessly swaying in a second-floor ballroom, the men clutching rolls of tickets and the ladies...

Jan 24, 2020 — In 2017, writer-director Paul Schrader was enjoying one of the peaks of his storied career with the release of First Reformed, a deeply unnerving drama that grapples with his perennial themes of sin, guilt, and faith. During the production of...

May 6, 2019 — Greta Garbo, Anita Loos, Ernst Lubitsch, Ben Hecht, and Salka Viertel cross paths in this month’s round.

Feb 7, 2019 — It’s an inauspicious beginning for festival director Dieter Kosslick’s farewell edition, but there’s much to look forward to.

Dec 6, 2018 — Also in today’s round of festival news: Guillermo del Toro’s alternative history of Mexican cinema and Sundance’s New Frontier.

Jan 24, 2018 — Deadline’s Patrick Hipes reports that NEON has just picked up North American rights to Three Identical Strangers, while CNN Films retains U.S. broadcast rights. “Tim Wardle’s documentary looks back at a human-interest story that captivated the world in the early...

Aug 12, 2017 — At Shadowplay, David Cairns has posted David Melville Wingrove’s tribute to Conchita Montenegro, whose career in theater and film took her around the world from the late 1920s through the mid-40s. Her “triumphant final film” would be the 1944 Spanish...

Feb 2, 2011 — This essay first appeared in the winter 2010 issue of Brick, a literary journal based in Toronto. It is posted here by permission of the author. Michelangelo said he could sense the figure in the uncut stone; his job was...

Nov 26, 2019 — Bette Davis gets the first laugh in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), and a little over two hours later, she gets the last laugh too. The film opens at the dinner for something called the Sarah Siddons Award...