The Phoenix

Sep 5, 2019 — Critics split three ways: Joker is just plain great, or great but dangerous, or dangerous and also really quite bad.

Apr 1, 2018 — Empire has been rolling out interviews from its “Spielberg Takeover” issue, the one with five different covers, including a podcast (102’01”) that’s naturally not part of the print version, in which contributors talk with Steven Spielberg himself and with Simon...

May 24, 2017 — “Sofia Coppola delivers a very enjoyable southern melodrama, the tale of a handsome, badly wounded Union soldier in enemy terrain during the American civil war who throws himself on the mercy of a ladies’ seminary—of all the outrageous things.” The...

Oct 7, 2015 — It’s night in the desert. Mike (River Phoenix), a teenage hustler given to bouts of narcolepsy, and Scott (Keanu Reeves), a slumming preppy prince, are huddled over a campfire. “I just want to kiss you, man,” says Mike softly. The...

Oct 15, 2020 — A quick survey of projects in the works coming from Ava DuVernay, Steven Soderbergh, Park Chan-wook, Clint Eastwood, and Ridley Scott.

May 21, 2025 — The exiled American director of Try and Get Me! and Hell Drivers depicted crime and violence as the inevitable results of capitalist competition.

Apr 24, 2025 — New features from Lynne Ramsay, Saeed Roustaee, Kristen Stewart, Hlynur Pálmason, and Ethan Coen join the lineup.

May 27, 2022 — After firing up the screen in Something Wild, Liotta secured immortality as a wiseguy in Goodfellas.

Dec 3, 2021 — In the spotlight this week: Mario Monicelli, Michael Snow, Gordon Parks, Fronza Woods, and the Japanese New Wave.

Sep 30, 2019 — One of contemporary world cinema’s most exciting filmmakers, Christian Petzold has, over the past two decades, built up a spellbinding body of work that grapples with his native Germany’s turbulent recent history, and its traumatic aftershocks. Now on the Criterion...