This Is It

Jul 29, 2013 — Guillermo del Toro’s historical thriller and supernatural horror film The Devil’s Backbone is clearly the work of a film artist with an immense imagination. But according to the writer-director, it was also inspired by a real-life experience that haunts him...

Jul 25, 2013 — The look of the dazzlingly evocative The Ice Storm is in large part the work of production designer extraordinaire Mark Friedberg (Far from Heaven, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). In an illustrated audio interview on release of Ang Lee’s...

Jul 11, 2013 — In this video, contemporary cinema’s preeminent monster lover, Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone), tells us about his passion for the original Godzilla, a film that is more serious and poignant than most may realize. Del Toro’s latest effort,...

Apr 22, 2013 — Restoration SpotlightShot in VistaVision and Technicolor, Richard III is the most eye-catching of Laurence Olivier’s essential big-screen Shakespeare adaptations. For years, it couldn’t be seen in its original glory, due to lost footage, faded colors, chemical staining, and missing frames....

Apr 4, 2013 — 1. Director Robert Bresson originally titled his screenplay Aide-toi . . ., a reference to the French expression “Aide-toi et le ciel t’aidera” (“Heaven helps those who help themselves”). He ultimately decided instead to use the title Devigny’s journalistic account of his...

Mar 28, 2013 — Repertory PicksAs part of its retrospective And God Created Jean-Louis Trintignant, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley is showing a 35 mm print of Eric Rohmer’s marvelous character study My Night at Maud’s on March 29. One of Rohmer’s effortlessly...

Jan 30, 2013 — Repertory PicksThanks to the mega success of her award-winning HBO series Girls, now in its second season, Lena Dunham seems to be everywhere lately. Next up is Boston. On February 6, Dunham will be at the Museum of Fine Arts...

Dec 11, 2012 — Philip Glass’s experimental operas and symphonic works of the 1960s and ’70s laid the groundwork for his hypnotic Qatsi scores.

Dec 3, 2012 — Everyone is talking about Daniel Day-Lewis’s riveting, persuasive performance as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. We’re also quite fond of Henry Fonda’s classic turn as a much greener version of the sixteenth president, in John Ford’s masterful and subtle...

Nov 20, 2012 — For a brief, shining moment, the genteel Japanese studio mutated into a fun house of grim ghouls and slimy aliens.