Red Kiss

May 23, 2017 — “Of all of the documentaries made about North Korea by Westerners in recent years, Claude Lanzmann’s Napalm, which premiered Sunday out of competition at Cannes, is by far the most peculiar, not to mention the most brazenly narcissistic,” writes Cineaste...

Jun 29, 2016 — In this essay, first published in Grand Street in 1994, Dr. Strangelove coscreenwriter Terry Southern offers a lively behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production.

Jun 28, 2016 — When Stanley Kubrick bought the motion picture rights to the 1958 thriller Red Alert, by the retired Royal Air Force navigator Peter George, he meant to direct an action film about a nuclear war triggered by a solitary madman. Some...

Apr 12, 2016 — Howard Hawks’s 1939 aviation classic Only Angels Have Wings is an exemplar of the auteurist Hollywood entertainer’s capability to fuse “a personal existential statement and a delightful piece of showmanship.”

Oct 29, 2014 — George Sluizer’s singularly unsettling work of psychological terror is a model of lucid craftsmanship.

Oct 21, 2014 — Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.

Jun 24, 2014 — In 1964, Richard Lester harnessed the Beatles’ exploding superstardom for a giddy day-in-the-life pop masterpiece.

Oct 30, 2012 — All of them actors? Nearly everyone wears a mask in Roman Polanski’s devilishly clever work of horror.

Jul 14, 2012 — Simply stated, Wes Anderson is the most original presence in American film comedy since Preston Sturges. He is as boundlessly confident as  Sturges was in his heyday, and he has a similarly keen ear for gaudy dialogue; a gift for...

May 22, 2012 — These five films chart the unlikely ascendance of a hero of American underground cinema.