Life with Father

Jun 15, 2020 — The hugely popular and prolific Italian actor Alberto Sordi relished playing rogues, characters riddled with foibles and weaknesses. In an interview with Positif’s Jean A. Gili in 1999, he revealed that his aim was to depict in a comic register...

Mar 17, 2020 — Released in, or rather let loose upon, the first year of the new millennium, Spike Lee’s febrile and ferocious media satire Bamboozled—the fifteenth feature-length “joint” of a prolific career—found its writer-director in an unflinching mode and an unforgiving mood. According...

Jan 31, 2020 — This week: Scorsese’s actresses, Paul Schrader’s plans, Lynne Sachs on Godard, Ritwik Ghatak’s rising reputation, and Bong Joon-ho everywhere.

Nov 29, 2019 — American gangsters, Chinese filmmakers, and a Czech animator are featured in this week’s round.

Jun 7, 2019 — He is the most disarming and self-effacing of the English actors who dominated stage and screen in the middle of the twentieth century—the others were John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, and Laurence Olivier. Those fellows carried themselves like grand...

May 29, 2019 — Once again, Lav Diaz and Takashi Miike did what they do; but the Fortnight also showcased a wide range of promising talent.

Apr 9, 2018 — Ingrid Bergman’s work in her native Sweden was an early showcase for her dazzlingly precocious talent and emotional depth.

Apr 5, 2018 — “Isao Takahata, who co-founded Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, has died at eighty-two, according to Yahoo! Japan.” Michael Nordine for IndieWire: “Takahata was a revered director in his own right, helming such animated classics as Grave of the...

Feb 18, 2018 — “Nymphetmania has a long and hoary pedigree in Hollywood, and flourished years before Nabokov gave us the Lolita syndrome,” writes Molly Haskell in the Guardian. “D. W. Griffith’s child-woman ingénues such as Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh were ‘pseudo-nymphets’ (critic...

Dec 17, 2017 — “He’s joking all the time if he feels he has an audience,” Barbet Schroeder said of Idi Amin in a 1976 New York Post interview.I think we know the type.Ugandan dictator Amin, the subject of Schroeder’s 1974 documentary General Idi Amin Dada: A...