At War

Jan 4, 1988 — The Secret Agent (1936) came to life in the prime of Alfred Hitchcock’s British period. It arrived between the popular triumph of The 39 Steps and the box-office rejection of Sabotage, a more daringly downbeat work. Secret Agent partakes of...

The writer and director talks about being inspired by Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball at a young age, selects a pair of films that portray the human impact of war, and praises Nina Hoss's performance in Phoenix.

Alexander Stille is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the author of several books, three of them on Italian subjects: Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism; Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the...

Mark Danner has reported on war and politics for three decades, from Central America to Bosnia to Iraq. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bard College and is the author of The Massacre at El Mozote, Torture...

Mar 25, 2024 — What makes a “bad” movie anyway? By surveying the bombs, disasters, and secret masterpieces (dis)honored at the Golden Raspberry Awards, we can learn much about American cinema’s prevailing standards of taste.

Apr 13, 2021 — To fall deeply in love means to take a risk, and no romantic movie is riskier than History Is Made at Night (1937). Producer Walter Wanger came up with the very grand and suggestive title, but he had only two...

Dec 3, 2020 — One of cinema’s preeminent directors is currently at work on two new projects.

Jul 3, 2020 — As The War of the Worlds is essentially a cautionary tale, each generation gets its own adaptation of H. G. Wells’s classic account of extraterrestrial invasion—one of the several seminal science-fiction novels, also including The Time Machine (1895) and The...

Nov 21, 2019 — Every love affair requires a border crossing. The person you see across a crowded bar, or meet at a dinner party, or find on a dating app is another country altogether—maybe a nice place to visit, but do you really...

Nov 5, 2018 — Alice Rohrwacher’s third feature, currently playing in Europe, heads to home screens at the end of the month.