Fear of Fear

Mar 27, 2006 — Louis Malle’s World War II–era drama follows a young collaborationist in rural France and asks how people with no interest in politics become active participants in brutal torture.

Sep 1, 2016 — Actor, writer, and director Illeana Douglas is the granddaughter of two-time Academy Award–winning actor Melvyn Douglas. She has starred in Cape Fear (1991), To Die For (1995), Grace of My Heart (1996), Picture Perfect (1997), and Ghost World (2001). In...

Feb 8, 1988 — Sidney Lumet’s courtroom drama explores the process of law in human hands, where prejudice, fear, weakness, and even weather can divert the carriage of justice.

Mar 24, 2026 — In this true-crime epic, Martin Scorsese combines his career-long exploration of amoral gangsterism with a sobering meditation on what it means to live on American soil.

Sep 10, 2024 — Andrew Haigh explores loss and queer loneliness in this exquisite, twilit tangle of lives and loves separated by space, time, and personal defenses.

May 17, 2004 — Banned by the Third Reich before it was even released, Fritz Lang’s denunciation of Nazi Germany is a compellingly contemporary image of terrorism in an age of universal conspiracy and advanced technology.

Apr 14, 2026 — Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) is a film about fear. That may not entirely jibe with its reputation as a biblical parody, but it might be the movie’s secret strength—why it continues to strike a nerve today. Many of...

Jan 7, 2014 — Satyajit Ray was ailing when he made them, but these three works from the great filmmaker’s final years show an artist at the height of his powers.

Feb 22, 2011 — It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deeply. And...

Dec 11, 2024 — In this semiautobiographical meditation on the fickle nature of creative genius, Federico Fellini opens his arms wide to the enigmas of childhood, religion, art, sex, and love—mysteries with no solution.