The Base

Mar 29, 2016 — Les Blank’s long-lost documentary revels in the trippy, eccentric world of and surrounding Tulsa Sound pioneer Leon Russell, transforming what might have been a standard concert movie into a genuine work of art.

Feb 3, 2016 — For more than two decades, photographer Gregory Crewdson has been creating otherworldly images that reveal an eerie side of Americana. His works, typically tableaux of small-town life, transform the everyday into the uncanny.

Jan 19, 2016 — Inside Llewyn Davis takes its protagonist on a Hero’s Journey of characteristically Coen-esque proportions—a voyage at turns serious and comic, and framed by an exquisitely curated selection of folk melodies.

May 29, 2015 — A shocking chapter of Soviet Czechoslovakian history is dramatized in Costa-Gavras’s controversial follow-up to Z.

May 19, 2015 — Charlie Chaplin’s intensely emotional drama is a dream film about show business, history, and death.

Apr 20, 2015 — "Afilm about India without elephants and tiger hunts”—this was how Jean Renoir described his objective in making The River. Guided by Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel, he rejected the India of exotic action and spectacle to make a meditative, almost mystical...

Oct 2, 2014 — The following is a chapter on The Innocents from cinematographer Freddie Francis’s memoir, The Straight Story from “Moby Dick” to “Glory.” It is reproduced here courtesy of Scarecrow Press. The last picture I worked on as a cinematographer in my...

Feb 27, 2014 — Roman Polanski’s film is a highly sophisticated adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel, in both its faithfulness and its divergences.

Dec 12, 2013 — A beloved filmmaker in India, the Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak digs into his region’s traumatic history in this epic melodrama.

Sep 23, 2013 — The neorealist master and the Hollywood icon forged a brilliant artistic path together, despite the backlash their controversial romance generated.