Hand of Death

Aug 22, 2017 — New York. The Metrograph’s series Antonioni x 6 is on from today and, in the Village Voice, Bilge Ebiri focuses on Le amiche (1955), “decidedly not what one would call ‘Antonioni-esque’”; L’avventura (1960), which “as been called alienating, but I’m...

Jul 12, 2017 — La telenovela errante, a film Raúl Ruiz shot in 1990 (image above) and now fully realized by his widow and editor, Valeria Sarmiento, is one of the highlights of the lineup for this year’s Locarno Film Festival. The seventieth edition...

Feb 9, 2010 — You can’t keep a good woman, or a great movie about a good woman, down. By all accounts, goodness in the real Lola Montez reflected the vagaries of character, not talent. She was, as Cosmo Brown says of Lina Lamont...

Sep 29, 2008 — After Ozu died on his sixtieth birthday, December 12, 1963, some thirty-two diaries were discovered. They were from 1933 to 1963, and though a few years were missing, they offer a commentary on the life of the director and reveal...

Jan 10, 2000 — The Night Porter is a provocative and problematic film. Made in 1974 by Italian director Liliana Cavani, it can be seen as an exercise in perversion and exploitation of the Holocaust for the sake of sensationalism. On the other hand,...

Apr 26, 2016 — “It is not an exaggeration to say that before Primary, documentary as we know it today—the art of candid observation—didn’t exist,” writes Thom Powers.

Jul 21, 2020 — Consider this an afterword to Taste of Cherry (1997), the feature that brought its director, Abbas Kiarostami, to full international prominence, after it became the first Iranian movie to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (where it...

Oct 24, 2025 — It is hard to conceive of a film more dazzlingly, dizzyingly divided against itself—or one more appropriately so—than this delirious creation of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and director Ken Russell.

Aug 12, 2024 — The great actor creates an unforgettable portrait of a man worn down by the world in Tamara Jenkins’s darkly funny and deeply moving family drama.

Apr 30, 2024 — The gentle rapport between actors Lili Taylor and River Phoenix fuels this humane examination of American masculinity, a film that showcases the nuanced and compassionate approach of director Nancy Savoca.