The Demon

May 22, 2017 — “Philippe Garrel has always only needed the barest means to make movie magic,” begins Daniel Kasman in the Notebook: “a beautiful, tragic face, a sad wall to put behind it, a mournful, pensive walk alone on the street. He is...

Apr 17, 2017 — A group of Cuba’s most seasoned musicians became an international sensation upon the release of this acclaimed documentary portrait.

Jan 19, 2017 — Ever wonder what, exactly, a “girl Friday” is? Over on his blog, scholar David Bordwell gets to the bottom of this and some other questions about Howard Hawks’s 1940 screwball masterpiece, a film that has beguiled him for almost fifty...

Nov 22, 2016 — The result of a notoriously troubled production, Marlon Brando’s unorthodox western presents a brooding vision of human futility.

Sep 8, 2016 — Mike Leigh’s 1990 comedy Life Is Sweet, showing at the Trylon microcinema as part of a monthlong retrospective of the director’s early films, presents an intimate portrait of working-class life in Thatcher-era north London.

Apr 12, 2016 — Howard Hawks’s 1939 aviation classic Only Angels Have Wings is an exemplar of the auteurist Hollywood entertainer’s capability to fuse “a personal existential statement and a delightful piece of showmanship.”

Mar 2, 2016 — Over at the Sight & Sound blog, the BFI has just published an insightful and exhaustive article by Albertine Fox about the brilliant career of Anne-Marie Miéville, the Swiss-born multimedia artist and director of several acclaimed features, including: My Dear...

Jan 12, 2016 — In German filmmaker Wim Wenders’s high-strung thriller, adapted from two Patricia Highsmith novels, Dennis Hopper plays sociopathic con man Tom Ripley as a “hopped-up elf from hell” who works his charms on a winsome and guileless Bruno Ganz.

Nov 5, 2015 — Julien Duvivier’s early sound films offer emotionally rich explorations of life in prewar France.

Oct 28, 2015 — For over fifty years, the brilliant composer and conductor Carl Davis has been enriching cinema with his evocative film scores. Although well-known for his silent movie work—he's created orchestrations for the re-releases of films like Harold Lloyd’s Speedy and Charlie...