Up Against It

Aug 19, 2002 — Ronald Neame’s dramedy has the distinction of being the only “feel-good” realistic spy film ever made, walking a fine line between topicality and escapism.

Jul 25, 2023 — A master class in dramatic tension and pacing, Carl Franklin’s neonoir masterpiece explores the desperate energy and desperate deeds that fuel real crime.

Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.

May 1, 2015 — In his first feature, Jean-Pierre Melville found subtly radical ways to adapt Vercors's underground French novel about quiet resistance against the German occupation.

Oct 6, 2008 — It is pretty much a convention of the hard-boiled gangster picture that most, if not all, of the principal characters wind up dead by the final shot. So it ought not constitute a “spoiler” to note that Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le...

Jan 5, 2004 — “Sometimes I think of my death,” Kurosawa has written: “I think of ceasing to be . . . and it is from these thoughts that Ikiru came.” The story of a man who knows he is going to die, the...

Jun 23, 2003 — Alain Resnais’s antidocumentary never purports to “document” the heinous realities of the Holocaust; instead, it interrogates our responses.

Jul 29, 2002 — Viewing Kon Ichikawa’s film of the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo, it is apparent that even then his main idea (despite the more than 150 cameras available to him) was to present a fragmented picture of the Games, rather than...

Jun 18, 2026 — We’re wrapping the week with top docs, Black writers, screwball comedies, and appreciations of Raoul Peck and Jafar Panahi.

Mar 19, 2026 — To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of VHS, the director and the editor of Videoheaven discuss how this game-changing format shaped their lives and imaginations and left a seismic impact on the film industry.