A Time Out of War

May 6, 2021 — Fame, as the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño once observed, is reductive. “Everything that ended in fame and everything that issued from fame was inevitably diminished,” he wrote in 2666, an epic novel published after his death.What Bolaño identified as the...

Jul 2, 2018 — Josef von Sternberg may have been one of cinema’s original micromanagers, but his films are testaments to longstanding collaborations with brilliant artists and technicians.

May 3, 2018 — Two of the earliest films to depict the bombing of Hiroshima show how politics shapes national mourning.

Dec 17, 2017 — “He’s joking all the time if he feels he has an audience,” Barbet Schroeder said of Idi Amin in a 1976 New York Post interview.I think we know the type.Ugandan dictator Amin, the subject of Schroeder’s 1974 documentary General Idi Amin Dada: A...

Mar 6, 2017 — To commemorate the anniversary of the late Polish master’s birth this week, critic Michał Oleszczyk pays tribute to his mercurial style, urgent political themes, and sly evasion of the censors.

Feb 20, 2017 — Joan Crawford delivers one of her greatest performances in Michael Curtiz’s unsparing look at class, ambition, and the all-consuming intensity of maternal love.

Sep 23, 2015 — Bruce Beresford draws on a controversial episode of Australian colonial history from 1901 to create an electrifying drama that questions the moral certitude of war.

Oct 7, 2013 — René Clair, Fredric March, and Veronica Lake cast sensational spells in this screwball supernatural treat.

Sep 17, 2013 — The author sheds some light on the fascinating life of the American scriptwriter behind Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan.

Mar 20, 2012 — Even more than with most documentaries that set out to record events as they happen, there was a lot of luck involved in producing The War Room (1993). When they turned their attention to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992,...