The Wingwalker

Jan 8, 2020 — When it comes to building a genuine relationship between characters on-screen, how do you capture the feeling of a shared history? How much begins with what’s written on the page, and how much relies on the chemistry between actors or...

Jan 7, 2020 — Understudies everywhere should take heart at the tale of Katharine Hepburn’s long history with the role of Linda Seton, the high-spirited but reclusive heiress she plays in George Cukor’s 1938 Holiday. When the Philip Barry play the film is based...

Dec 6, 2019 — Among the many enduring virtues of The Story of Temple Drake—a pre-Code William Faulkner adaptation whose sensational depiction of a hopelessly fallen world, rife with sexual violence and other forms of malice, scandalized audiences upon its release in 1933—is its...

Dec 3, 2019 — As the title card comes up, the movie has already begun, with a frontal view of a dilapidated plantation house, its ivied columns sporadically lit up by a raging storm. Spectators at the time of the film’s release who were...

Nov 16, 2019 — Greg Mottola’s irresistible first feature, the dysfunctional-family odyssey The Daytrippers, is one of the great stories of 1990s low-budget independent filmmaking. Shot for $60,000 on Super 16 mm in just seventeen days—with up-and-coming cast members like Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, Hope...

Nov 12, 2019 — The Daytrippers came out in theaters in 1997, back when I was in graduate school at NYU. That was a year when you could rent videotapes everywhere—at Blockbuster, but also at a Laundromat or a bodega. There were still phone booths...

Oct 24, 2019 — Studio Visits Arguably the greatest movie monster of all time, Godzilla has appeared on countless screens, posters, and merchandise since it first stomped its way into theaters in 1954. While working on the cover of Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975—one...

Oct 1, 2019 — Charlie Chaplin’s sidesplitting The Circus, the last movie he made during the silent era, is a true testament to the man’s genius, not only as a comedian in front of the camera but also as a director behind it. The...

Sep 13, 2019 — With The Cloud-Capped Star, Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak reinvented the melodrama. The story of a refugee family’s increasing dependence on self-sacrificing eldest daughter Neeta (Supriya Choudhury), the 1960 film makes innovative use of an array of striking techniques—including elliptical editing,...

Aug 30, 2019 — In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, after being censured for its invasion of Manchuria. Despite this, the majority of Japanese people remained avid consumers of American movies and Western fashion, which exasperated the militarists in power. A...