The Criterion Collection
Jun 19, 2014 — PerformancesTime has added some latter-day ironies to All That Heaven Allows, and not just the revelation that its star Rock Hudson was gay. There’s also the political career of Ronald Reagan, the ex-husband of Hudson’s costar, Jane Wyman—built on the...
Jun 17, 2013 — The silent legend practices slapstick with clockwork precision in his most iconic, astonishing comedy.
Mar 28, 2011 — Topsy-Turvy is both an anomaly among the films of Mike Leigh and, contrary as it may seem, a Rosetta stone. On the one hand, it is Leigh’s only costume picture and only biopic—a far cry from the bittersweet, realistic films...
Short Takes
Aug 9, 2010 — We’re always tickled by the entries in the Guardian’s Films That Changed My Life series, in which directors and actors wax eloquent about the films that have been most formative for them. This week, the publication asked actor Alfred Molina...
Nov 11, 2009 — As a member of the Harlem Amateur Players, Robeson had heard a great deal about Brutus Jones from the Playhouse’s set designer, Cleo Throckmorton. Moved by Robeson’s performances with the Manhattan-based troupe, Throckmorton was the first to approach him about...
Essays
Jan 11, 1999 — David Lean followed his prodigious adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations with this brilliant crystallization of Dickens’ Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. It deploys the cinema’s special powers of dash and immediacy to convey all the venturesomeness and...
The Daily
Jun 29, 2022 — A fresh round on biographies and studies of filmmakers and actors as well as a few novel ideas and critical collections.
Jan 13, 2010 — Joe Mantegna played the lead roles in David Mamet’s House of Games and Homicide. Mantegna and Mamet started out together as actors in Chicago theater in the 1970s, before Mamet turned playwright. Mantegna went on to win a Tony Award...
The Daily
May 6, 2026 — Erige Sehiri’s Promised Sky opens the New York African Film Festival and screens as part of Seattle’s African Pictures program.
Features
Sep 25, 2024 — At a time when women were understood to be the primary audience for movies, Hollywood studios built vehicles for actresses that doubled as showcases for the industry’s many brilliant female screenwriters.