Rich and Poor

May 18, 2020 — It’s hard to imagine Hollywood without Frances Marion. The story of the screenwriter’s career is entwined with the story of Hollywood itself, from its pioneer days to the Golden Age. Part of Marion’s skill as a writer was how her...

Jun 17, 2015 — Taking the form of a casual conversation, Louis Malle’s film about transformative experiences is an outgrowth of its writer-stars’ experimental theater days.

Feb 25, 2014 — A testament to Steven Soderbergh’s versatility, this story of a boy growing up during the Great Depression is a tender but tough-minded look at a child’s inner world.

May 12, 2014 — The Italian cinema expert describes the immense popularity of Dino Risi’s film in its home country, and the way it deepened the commedia all’italiana genre.

Jul 11, 2023 — In her audacious debut feature, Cheryl Dunye blends romantic comedy and staged archival material to explore love, friendship, and early U.S. cinema’s history of exclusion.

Nov 23, 2021 — The End In the end, it should not have come as any kind of surprise. When Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo dethroned Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) as the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine’s international poll of...

Nov 13, 2012 — With this frenetic cinematic fresco, Pasolini began his Trilogy of Life and its forays into a world as yet unspoiled by capitalism.

Mar 13, 2025 — While a film’s stars are forced to bear the responsibility of moving a narrative forward, supporting actors get to have fun providing comic relief or suggesting whole lives being lived beyond the screen.

Mar 5, 2018 — Along with 132 short films and a slew of masterclasses, installations, discussions, and other events, the Berlin International Film Festival presented 253 features this year. I managed to catch twenty-seven of them, and Adina Pintilie’s Touch Me Not, winner of...

May 10, 2016 — Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place imbues the conventions of film noir with a subtle, tense vulnerability that lends a naturalistic weight to the film’s powerful emotional impact.