A Man

Apr 15, 2014 — In the 1950s, many Japanese directors made films that urgently reflected the postwar realities of their country, from economic struggle to nuclear fallout. Another common theme was the influence of American culture on Japan, as seen in films by Nagisa...

Feb 28, 2014 — Tess is surely among the most beautiful films that Roman Polanski has made. The director, shooting in the French countryside in Normandy and Brittany, traded the intentionally claustrophobic aesthetic of so many of his films (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby) for an...

Feb 17, 2014 — Flailing fathers, anxious mothers, and their moody offspring—these characters may have tails, but they’re Wes Anderson people through and through.

Feb 4, 2014 — When François Truffaut was a twenty-three-year-old film critic, in 1955, he read an autobiographical first novel by a seventy-four-year-old writer, Henri-Pierre Roché. “The book overwhelmed me,” he later recalled, “and I wrote: If I ever succeed in making films, I...

Sep 24, 2013 — By the time Roberto Rossellini joined forces with the international superstar Ingrid Bergman in the late 1940s, he had already left an indelible mark on the history of film with his groundbreaking works of neorealism, including Rome Open City, Paisan,...

Sep 18, 2013 — This chapter about director Richard Linklater’s beginnings, from the 1996 book Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema, is by the former producer’s representative, creator and host of IFC’s Split Screen, and...

Aug 7, 2013 — In 1958, in the midst of his most fecund cinematic period, Yasujiro Ozu made his first color film, the splendid Equinox Flower. Like so many of Ozu’s films, this poignant drama is about the subtly difficult emotional landscape navigated by...

Jul 31, 2013 — The story of the author’s long correspondence with the silent film icon.

Jul 30, 2013 — Guillermo del Toro’s ghostly fable beautifully reflects the director’s fascination with the personal and the political.

Nov 27, 2012 — Among the many pleasures of Heaven’s Gate is its evocative score. It was arranged by David Mansfield, who also performed nearly all of it and even appears on-screen, unforgettably, as a fiddler on roller skates. When Mansfield came by the...