Born in Flames

Jun 4, 2019 — The great Hollywood portrait photographs are like close-ups that never end. Cinema is an art of faces, and the chance to gaze at them, to get lost in them, may be the deepest thrill movies offer. In the darkness of...

Feb 13, 2018 — With the scrappiest of means, George A. Romero created not only a landmark of independent cinema but also an indelible portrait of America as hellscape.

Jun 27, 2011 — A rogue’s gallery of vituperative 1950s vixens and night-world tough-guy gargoyles all coalescing in a constellation of twinkling cold war lights, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is a film of a thousand stars. Stars of every sort, size, and description:...

Nov 27, 2010 — The New Jersey resort town of Atlantic City provides the backdrop for two distinctive films made at opposite ends of the seventies: Bob Rafelson’s 1972 The King of Marvin Gardens and Louis Malle’s Atlantic City, released in 1981. That decade...

Mar 1, 2022 — The first film I saw at last year’s Morelia International Film Festival opens on the image of a freshly dug grave. Shovelfuls of earth fall into the open pit as two doctors stand above it, lamenting the loss of yet...

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

Jan 18, 2018 — The lineups for the sixty-eighth Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 15 through 25, are coming hard and fast now. Today sees rollouts for the Forum, the main attraction for many a cinephile, and the Berlinale Series. With descriptions...

Dec 29, 2022 — Martin Scorsese, Hayao Miyazaki, Catherine Breillat, Michael Mann, Christian Petzold, David Fincher . . .

Oct 7, 2013 — René Clair, Fredric March, and Veronica Lake cast sensational spells in this screwball supernatural treat.

Mar 17, 2010 — 1. A Park—Night A man aflame is running directly toward camera. This image, which comes from Nicholas Ray’s initial treatment for Rebel Without a Cause, might stand at the head of almost any of Ray’s movies, since it so clearly...