The Help

Sep 21, 2016 — An exhilarating blend of noir and splatter-flick tropes, the Coen brothers’ debut feature established their unique brand of cosmic fatalism.

May 11, 2015 — The poignancy of Leo McCarey's tearjerker is due as much to the director's scrupulous aesthetic choices as his unforgettable characters and story.

Apr 1, 2015 — Ingmar Bergman plumbs unfathomable depths in his cinematically sensual tale of four women facing the inevitable in mind and body.

May 12, 2014 — The Italian cinema expert describes the immense popularity of Dino Risi’s film in its home country, and the way it deepened the commedia all’italiana genre.

Apr 27, 2014 — A leading light of commedia all’italiana, Dino Risi specialized in fleet, satirical takes on contemporary Italian culture, and this road-trip smash was his most trenchant.

Dec 3, 2013 — This scathing drama about a toxic society established Elio Petri as an important director of popular political entertainment in Italy.

Sep 9, 2013 — As outré as it is, the most subversive thing about this classic farce is its take on what’s normal.

Jun 26, 2013 — On the life and work of the famous Czech author, and the pleasures and challenges of translating him.

Jun 19, 2013 — Disorienting, brutal, and bloody beautiful, František Vláčil’s epic is a dark medieval vision teeming with cinematic invention.

Jun 20, 2011 — Genres collide in the great Hollywood movies of the mid­fifties cold-war thaw. With the truce in Korea and the red scare on the wane, ambitious directors seemed freer to mix and match and even ponder the new situation. The western...