The Five

Aug 7, 2017 — Todd Haynes is working on a documentary about the Velvet Underground, reports Variety’s John Hopewell. Speaking in Locarno, where he’s receiving the Pardo d’onore Manor for career achievement, Haynes says that he’ll “rely certainly on Warhol films but also a...

Jul 8, 2017 — A number of projects in the works have been announced since Thursday’s overall roundup, and we begin with Michael O'Connell for the Hollywood Reporter: “Ava DuVernay is adapting the story of the ‘Central Park Five’ for Netflix. The multihyphenate, currently...

Jun 26, 2017 — 1. Before ever setting foot in front of a camera, Ivor Novello found fame as a music composer in 1914 with his beloved wartime anthem “Keep the Home Fires Burning (’Till the Boys Come Home).” Over a million copies of...

Jun 20, 2017 — With both films now streaming on the Criterion Channel, director Carroll Ballard discusses the parallels between his short documentary Rodeo and Francesco Rosi’s bull-fighting classic The Moment of Truth.

Apr 27, 2017 — 1. As I began work on The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew and Associates, I knew that 1960’s Primary was really the birth of what we think of as the modern documentary: observational photography based on access to an interesting subject, presenting...

Nov 30, 2016 — The Lone Wolf and Cub film series has its roots in Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s manga of the same name, which was itself a major influence on Western cartooning and illustration in the 1980s. It felt only natural to...

Oct 5, 2016 — Rock critic Robert Christgau examines the evocative use of three early Leonard Cohen songs in Robert Altman’s brilliant revisionist western.

Jun 22, 2016 — In honor of the semicentennial anniversary of Kartemquin Films, the influential documentarian discusses his groundbreaking, Kartemquin-produced 1994 film Hoop Dreams, what his work with the company has meant for him, and how Kartemquin has grown over the past fifty years.

Jan 28, 2016 — Repertory Picks Last weekend, at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, the Film Noir Foundation kicked off its fourteenth annual Noir City celebration. The focus of this year’s festival, which showcases twenty-five favorites of the genre, is cinema’s fascination with the art...

May 5, 2014 — Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole almost requires an honorary expansion of the term film noir. There are no private eyes in seedy offices or femmes fatales lurking in the shadows of neon-lit doorways, no forces of evil arrayed against...