Head-On

Feb 18, 2014 — The immediacy of an ongoing war electrifies Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful second Hollywood feature.

Dec 2, 2010 — Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1968) opens in a shiny space: nuns breeze past; a woman in a white uniform clacks through, bearing towels; a baby cries. People wait. The feeling is “hospital.” A second woman in white delivers towels, and we...

Nov 23, 2008 — The possession of a real voice is always a marvel, an almost religious thing.

Oct 11, 2017 — The shower scene in Psycho remains one of the most iconic scenes in film history. Alexandre O. Philippe, director of the new documentary 78/52,explains why it touched a nerve with audiences.

May 16, 2024 — Does it measure up? For most reviewers, the answer is a resounding yes—but there are a few outliers.

May 6, 2024 — Perhaps the most hard-to-categorize of the great Hollywood studios came into its own with a string of critically acclaimed films based on popular books and plays, including Born Yesterday, A Raisin in the Sun, and From Here to Eternity.

Nov 20, 2023 — This month brings new books on Godard and Bergman, novelists moonlighting as film critics, and biographies of Lena Horne and Elizabeth Taylor.

Sep 18, 2023 — Winners and runners-up include American Fiction, The Holdovers, Dicks: The Musical, and Dear Jessi.

May 11, 2022 — Louis Feuillade’s influential serial Les Vampires reflected the French national subconscious at the time by depicting a madcap world of anarchy and violent spectacle.

May 27, 2020 — Walking, like breathing, is something we do without thinking, an activity so commonplace that pedestrian has as its second meaning uninspired, ordinary, dull. Movies, however, reveal this action as more than just the original mode of getting from here to...