Kill, Baby, Kill!

Jun 18, 2017 — “This book will be one of the most important film publications of 2017,” declares David Bordwell, introducing a guest post from Charles Maland, who’s edited Complete Film Criticism: Reviews, Essays, and Manuscripts, Volume Five in the University of Tennessee Press...

Apr 10, 2017 — Critic Peter Cowie pays tribute to a quintessentially English master, whose prolific career stretches back to the silent era.

Feb 23, 2017 — An elder statesman of independent filmmaking, Samuel Fuller spun his newsroom and frontline experiences into his movies, developing a unique cinematic voice that was always raw and personal.

Jan 9, 2017 — A feast of whip-smart banter, Howard Hawks’s protofeminist take on newsroom politics is the most grown-up of all remarriage comedies.

Oct 26, 2016 — The tropes of light comedy give way to a Kafkaesque nightmare in this incendiary critique of moral rot in Franco-era Spain.

May 24, 2016 — In The Player, Robert Altman’s early nineties comeback film, the director brilliantly skewers Hollywood—getting all the details right, as only he could—while constructing his own kind of Hollywood Movie.

Mar 29, 2016 — Les Blank’s long-lost documentary revels in the trippy, eccentric world of and surrounding Tulsa Sound pioneer Leon Russell, transforming what might have been a standard concert movie into a genuine work of art.

Feb 16, 2016 — In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima spins a complex aesthetic web around his documentary-like structure, packing detail, history, politics, and emotion into his surrealist inquiry into capital punishment.

Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.

May 27, 2014 — Howard Hawks was both a skillful Hollywood craftsman and a deeply personal artist, and this western of uncommon wit and grandeur is among his greatest and quirkiest films.