Hell and High Water

Jun 23, 2026 — “Ozone Hole over Baltimore?” queries a panicky 1992 headline in the Baltimore Sun. Sure, as the article clarifies, the Maryland metropolis, eternal home base of trash icon John Waters, is no more vulnerable to ozone depletion than any other city...

May 28, 2024 — With just a few exceptions, critics are generally pleased with this year’s awards.

Dec 1, 2009 — The first words we hear are Sam Cutler’s: “Everybody seems to be ready—are we ready?” We were nowhere near ready for what was to come, there at the bitter end of the sixties. I remember that rainy day so well,...

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.

Apr 6, 2010 — In “the cinema of flourishes”—as scholar David Bordwell once memorably characterized the long and grand tradition of Japanese filmmaking—few flourish makers have flown so high as Takeo Kimura, longtime Seijun Suzuki collaborator and art director extraordinaire, who died recently at...

Jul 16, 2017 — “Legendary filmmaker George A. Romero, father of the modern movie zombie and creator of the groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead franchise, has died at 77,” reports Tre’vell Anderson for the Los Angeles Times. “Romero died Sunday in his sleep...

Mar 13, 2018 — Jim Cummings’s Thunder Road has won Grand Jury Award in the 2018 SXSW Narrative Feature Competition, and Hao Wu’s People’s Republic of Desire takes the Grand Jury award in the Documentary Feature Competition. Here’s the complete list of winners with...

Feb 22, 2022 — The fourth feature by the Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui devastatingly lays bare the conditions that spurred hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to flee after the fall of Saigon.

Jun 27, 2017 — Alfred Hitchcock brings a spirit of cinematic ingenuity to a thin narrative, resulting in a flawed but fascinating film that contains one of the most virtuosic sequences in his filmography.

Sep 4, 2020 — Black directors recommend films that have had an impact on their work. Also this week: Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, Yasuzo Masumura, Takashi Miike, and Alan Clarke.