Empty Eyes

May 31, 2022 — The jury gave awards to nearly half the competition, but some critical favorites missed out.

Jan 28, 2022 — Names in the news this week: Asta Nielsen, Guillermo del Toro, Quentin Tarantino, Alexandre Rockwell, James Blue, and Mou Tun-fei.

Oct 20, 2021 — This uncanny tale of existential anxiety stands out as the most rigorously pared-down American science-fiction film of the 1950s.

Sep 22, 2021 — No one’s claiming that Cry Macho is a great movie, but plenty are moved to reflect on what Eastwood has meant to us over all these years.

Aug 20, 2021 — The author of Velvet Was the Night pays tribute to the shockingly stripped-down, dread-inducing use of silence in Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterful neonoir.

Jul 20, 2021 — Dismissed as gossip-column fodder in its time, Jacques Deray’s cooly enigmatic villa thriller is an exploration of masculine vanity and feminine disillusion.

Jul 7, 2021 — In the 1990s, Hong Kong was home to a staggering number of the most gifted and charismatic actors in the world. It’s impossible to imagine the films of Wong Kar Wai—or the global art-house phenomenon they generated—without these extraordinary performers;...

Apr 20, 2021 — 1. “I Felt Nothing” In September 2019, about halfway between claiming the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May and earning multiple Oscar nominations in January 2020, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite was briefly upstaged by a movie from the director’s past....

Jan 26, 2021 — Larisa Shepitko was born in eastern Ukraine in 1938. Her mother was a schoolteacher; her father, who left the family, fought in World War II. Her mother raised her and her two siblings on her own, and the moment Larisa...

Jan 12, 2021 — In the course of selling or promoting a film, a director will invariably be asked, “What’s this movie really about?” The desired answer is usually predetermined—marketers want a concise, two-sentence hook; reporters want a sound bite; critics want a thesis...