The Great Lie

Aug 31, 2017 — Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, premiering in Competition in Venice and screening as a Special Presentation in Toronto, is a “ravishing, eccentric auteur’s imagining, spilling artistry, empathy and sensuality from every open pore, [offering] more straight-up movie for...

Aug 18, 2017 — In this unsparing drama, Mike Leigh captures the grim mood of Thatcher’s England through the frustrations of a working-class London family.

Jul 22, 2014 — Jeanne Moreau’s flighty, enigmatic Jackie in Jacques Demy’s poetic drama is in the great tradition of dreamy Demy heroines.

Sep 23, 2014 — In director Jack Clayton’s hands, Henry James’s tale of the sinister and sensual things hiding behind Victorian decorum becomes one of the screen’s great works of terror.

Dec 8, 2015 — In Speedy, Harold Lloyd, a comic genius who thought of himself as a quintessentially average American man, places his optimistic everyman character within the context of a society in shift, to great comedic effect.

Apr 21, 2017 — George Stevens’s Oscar-winning comedy captures the first sparks of attraction that ignited one of the great on- and offscreen romances in Hollywood history.

Mar 26, 2014 — The author recalls his encounters with the great Swedish actress.

Sep 30, 2013 — The author describes his interactions with the great Polish filmmaker.

Jan 20, 2012 — Quel scandale! In The Smiling Lieutenant’s “Jazz Up Your Lingerie,” one of the most delightful numbers from all the titles in the Eclipse series Lubitsch Musicals, Claudette Colbert’s free-and-easy flapper Franzi gives Miriam Hopkins’s prim Princess Anna (royalty from a...

Oct 18, 2019 — An intriguing paradox lies at the heart of Errol Morris’s body of work: while his films are driven by a relentless pursuit of knowledge and facts, they ultimately reveal cinema’s inability to capture a definitive version of reality. It’s this...