Wakesurf Lovers

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.

Dec 18, 2016 — Imogen Sara Smith examines the tensions between tradition and modernity reflected in two silent crime films by Yasujiro Ozu and Tomu Uchida.

Dec 12, 2016 — Patriotic masterminds choreograph capers from secret headquarters while dashing secret agents execute their plans by the light of flashing blades and gunfire. Jeopardy escalates second to second until our heroes and heroines escape by the skin of their teeth. Spy...

Nov 30, 2016 — Today, we’re celebrating the seventy-third birthday of one of American cinema’s most lyrical and enigmatic storytellers. Over the course of more than four decades, Terrence Malick has established a distinctive aesthetic that juxtaposes the majestic beauty of nature with the...

Nov 28, 2016 — PerformancesAny paean to noir seductress nonpareil Gloria Grahame—mine included—can’t hope to surpass this encomium from Boyd McDonald, one of her most ardent and articulate devotees. Saluting Grahame’s performance in In a Lonely Place (1950) in his essential 1985 compendium, Cruising...

Nov 18, 2016 — Tonight we salute the unique gifts of actor and monologue artist Spalding Gray, whose solo performance pieces inspired soaring flights of cinema like Jonathan Demme’s Swimming to Cambodia and the two Steven Soderbergh films that make up our double bill....

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.

Oct 4, 2016 — This account of a visit to the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls set is excerpted from an issue of the University of California, Los Angeles, newspaper.

Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.

Jul 7, 2016 — In honor of the director, we look back at his quintessentially American narratives.