High and Low

Essays

Oct 12, 1998 Are there cultural purists still remaining who would argue that the “Westernized” title of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece—High and Low—throws polluted water on the cosmological fire of its given name: Tengoku to jigoku—literally, Heaven and Hell?Kurosawa’s once insisted-upon reputation as...

Aug 28, 1995 Three Cases of Murder is of most interest to American audiences for Orson Welles’s flamboyant and bravura performance as Lord Mountdrago. However, it’s equally important as a showcase for Wendy Toye, one of Britain’s first female directors, and star Alan...

Mar 22, 1993 Elizabethan prodigal prodigy Christopher Marlowe, whose tantalizingly brief life ended in political assassination, wrote a history play, in the mid-1590s, about the 1327 political assassinations of England’s Edward II and his lover and boyhood friend, Piers Gaveston. Rarely performed, Edward...

Nov 19, 1992 In Hieronymous Karl Friedrich, Baron von Munchausen, the greatest liar in history outside of politics, director Terry Gilliam has found perhaps his closest fictional counterpart.

Dec 2, 1991 In 1972, Stephen King began writing a short story entitled “Carrie”. The opening revolved around the unexpected and late arrival of Carrie White’s first menstrual period in front of her classmates in the girls’ locker room. But, King stopped when...

The Big Chill

Essays

Mar 11, 1991 Lawrence Kasdan’s second directorial effort is a story about the sixties generation's idealism—as well as his most personal movie.

Sep 24, 1990 Imagine Hitchcock’s Psycho told from the point of view of its title character, and you have a rough idea of Taxi Driver. This riveting 1976 film is at once a thriller, a psychological case study, an exploration of the eroticism...

Jul 11, 1988 Cinema has given us any number of tales of the criminal underworld, and explorations of the mindsets of murderers—yet there’s been nothing quite like Shohei Imamura’s searing work.

Jun 13, 1988 G. W. Pabst lends humanity and depth to his adaptation of a play by Bertolt Brecht—one of the last great works of German cinema's richest period.

Feb 29, 1988 Marx Brothers aficionados have argued for years over the relative merits of A Night at the Opera and the “purer” Marx movies such as Duck Soup. Certainly there’s no comparison on a point-by-point basis: Duck Soup is a classic of...

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