Brink of Life

Nov 15, 2022 — A box-office success that buoyed Hong Kong’s beleaguered movie industry in the early 2000s, this suite of crime films combines narrative intricacy and moral complexity with an abundance of megastar charisma.

Sep 6, 2022 — Here’s an overview of how some of the contenders are faring with critics in Venice.

Mar 25, 2022 — With its rambling Victorian mansions and seedy charms, the once-exclusive area of downtown Los Angeles was film noir’s favorite neighborhood.

Oct 20, 2021 — The range this month stretches from the silent era to this weekend’s launch of The Liberated Film Club.

May 21, 2021 — Known for her resilient heroines, the prolific Japanese actor finds agency through moments of hesitation in one of her seventeen collaborations with Mikio Naruse.

Apr 16, 2021 — Few motifs in Indian cinema are as potent, as laden with history and meaning, as the train. In 1955’s Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray immortalized the railways as the symbol of an alienating modernity in a newly independent India; in a...

Dec 20, 2020 — Before ringing in the new year, we’re taking a look back at some of the most memorable essays and interviews we published on the Current in 2020. It’s been a head-spinning twelve months, to say the least, but we hope...

Dec 12, 2017 — Alexander Payne skewers the absurdities of American politics in this tale of a high-school presidential campaign gone ugly.

Mar 15, 2016 — Set during the height of McCarthy-era paranoia and arriving in 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Frankenheimer’s high-anxiety Communist conspiracy thriller tapped into the darkest fears of Cold War America.

Jul 7, 2015 — Our recollections of Robert Siodmak’s 1946 movie The Killers are apt to center on three primary elements: Ernest Hemingway’s story, so literally brought to the screen in the film’s opening scenes; Ava Gardner, carrying the full weight of that late-forties...