Man in the Middle

Feb 6, 2018 — “A jolt of a movie, Black Panther creates wonder with great flair and feeling partly through something Hollywood rarely dreams of anymore: myth.” So begins Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “Most big studio fantasies take you out for...

Jan 18, 2018 — The lineups for the sixty-eighth Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 15 through 25, are coming hard and fast now. Today sees rollouts for the Forum, the main attraction for many a cinephile, and the Berlinale Series. With descriptions...

Aug 15, 2017 — Walter Matthau solidified his reputation as a formidable comedic force in this delightful Cold War espionage romp.

Mar 24, 2017 — Capturing the cultural anxieties of the 1970s, Hal Ashby’s comedic parable explores the pitfalls of innocence and credulity in American politics.

Nov 4, 2015 — In the midst of a tumultuous period in his life and career, Ingmar Bergman made one of his most ebullient comedies.

Nov 13, 2012 — Moving to Chaucer’s gray-skied England, Pier Paolo Pasolini pushed his trilogy into darker realms.

Oct 17, 2011 — Scratch the surface of a contemporary J-horror classic like Ringu (1998) or any of the Ju-on films (2000–03) and you’ll glimpse Yabu no naka no kuroneko (Black Cat from the Grove), released in the U.S. as simply Kuroneko (1968). Shot...

Nov 19, 2007 — Ingmar Bergman made some outstanding films before Sawdust and Tinsel (1953). But that film, released in America under the meretricious title The Naked Night—and known in Sweden as The Clown’s Evening—was the first that no other director could have made....

May 24, 2004 — Stray Dog, the ninth film directed by Akira Kurosawa, is a detective story that’s also meant to function as a commentary on the desperate social conditions of postwar Japan: a kind of neorealist cop movie.

Mar 15, 2004 — This Japanese classic’s guiding passion is hunger, and its central image—a gaping black hole in the earth—is that of an all-consuming maw.