Life of a King

Aug 13, 2010 — The Docks of New York When John Grierson, the Scotsman whose absolute devotion to realism on film—he coined the word documentary and created the National Film Board of Canada—was asked how he’d enjoyed a screening of a now-lost Josef von Sternberg...

Nov 2, 2008 — To see the gorgeous Fanfan la Tulipe is to go back in time twice over: to the film’s eighteenth-century French setting and to the international cinema world of more than fifty years ago, when this genial action farce was initially...

Jun 19, 2006 — This essay originally appeared in the fanzine PHOTON (issue #22), in 1972. Stop-motion animation has been attracting a growing number of enthusiasts for about the last ten years, and though it seems the majority of these people must out of...

Apr 24, 2006 — This influential crime thriller, designed purely as a genre exercise, is the first in the long series of anomalies that was Louis Malle’s career.

May 16, 1988 — Prior to the success of Scaramouche in 1952, many in Hollywood felt that the big-budget “swashbuckler” film was no longer a safe investment. While such motion pictures as MGM’s version of The Three Musketeers (directed by George Sidney, 1948) and...

Apr 28, 2026 — In April 1992, John Singleton was en route to the set of his second film when he heard the verdict on the radio. A predominantly white jury had acquitted four police officers who, a year earlier, had been caught on...

Nov 21, 2025 — Look who’s talking: Sissy Spacek, Sylvia Chang, Ryan Coogler, Jean Renoir, and Roberto Rossellini.

Jul 22, 2025 — New films by Olivier Assayas, Noah Baumbach, Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Mona Fastvold, and Park Chan-wook will compete for the Golden Lion.

May 23, 2025 — We’re in the mood for Wong Kar Wai, Kira Muratova, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Alan Rudolph, and Dag Johan Haugerud.

Mar 17, 2025 — Headlining this month’s roundup are Joan Didion, Merle Oberon, and Charlie Chaplin.