Happy Times

Jul 14, 2009 — Tough title to live up to. The lofty three-word phrase Al Reinert chose for his 1989 documentary on the Apollo space program comes from the plaque the first men on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, left there in...

Jun 8, 2009 — As I write this, it has been a year and a half since Ingmar Bergman passed away—and I miss him daily. I miss his imagination and the comfort he gave, both personally and through his films. I got to know...

Jan 6, 2009 — Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning film is not just an epic but also a small film, one in which, somehow or other, the scope of David Lean has been enriched with the vision of Ozu.

Jul 7, 2008 — Sometimes it’s pretty tough for me to divorce my inner fanboy from the (probably unrealistic) ideal of a business-only, detached producer. One such moment was when I saw that Anthony Mann’s The Furies was a part of our Paramount deal....

Feb 11, 2008 — Though today he is most fondly remembered for his later romantic comedies, typifying Hollywood filmmaking in its heyday, it should be known that Ernst Lubitsch was also a pioneer of the modern movie musical.

Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.

Jun 25, 2007 — Taking the form of apocalyptic science fiction typical of the Cold War era, Chris Marker’s singular film is simultaneously a philosophical fiction, genre exercise, and treatise on cinematic time.

Apr 23, 2007 — Louis Malle’s documentary work adopts certain tenets of cinéma direct—improvisation, minimal crew, the refusal to organize reality—and applies them to a consistently class-conscious, outsider perspective.

Feb 19, 2007 — For a director whose vision is so frequently called pessimistic, Mikio Naruse’s drama exhibits a lightness of touch, deft and coolly understated, like its cocktail jazz score.

Jan 22, 2007 — Spencer Gordon Bennet’s eclectic science fiction–adventure movie bundles a serious patriotic message within its retelling of the Odysseus myth.