Life with Father

Apr 14, 2026 — Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) is a film about fear. That may not entirely jibe with its reputation as a biblical parody, but it might be the movie’s secret strength—why it continues to strike a nerve today. Many of...

May 28, 2026 — In his delightful and engrossing new memoir Flashbacks: A Passion for Film, Peter Cowie brings to vivid life the era we have come to know as the golden age of art-house cinema, an astonishing period in the growth and distribution...

Jan 26, 2026 — The new year brings an ode to Judy Garland, conversations with Martin Scorsese, and a novel by John Sayles.

Feb 21, 2025 — The pioneer of African cinema carried “the inventive temperament of a dreamer armed with a firm political orientation.”

Sep 9, 2022 — James Wong Howe was a fighter, and he learned how to be one over the course of a turbulent upbringing. Born Wong Tung Jim in 1899, in the Chinese province of Guangdong, the man who would become one of the...

Feb 28, 2020 — Flashbacks Had Jörn Donner been born anywhere other than Finland, he would have been world-famous. As it was, he dominated the Finnish cultural scene for several decades. Prolific writer, film critic, director, and producer, as well as a politician and...

Apr 19, 2018 — With a mix of improvisation, balletic physicality, and slapstick humor, Hollywood master Leo McCarey crafted the most sublime of screwball comedies.

Feb 19, 2016 — The filmmaker, who began his career as a stage director and designer before shifting his focus to movies, swung by for a chat about his new film and his lifelong affinity for the macabre.

Oct 4, 2011 — Masaki Kobayashi rejects the notion of individual submission to the group, condemning the hierarchical structures that pervaded Japanese political and social life in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mar 27, 2006 — Louis Malle’s World War II–era drama follows a young collaborationist in rural France and asks how people with no interest in politics become active participants in brutal torture.