The Act of Killing

Sep 24, 2024 — Emerging out of the mass death, cultural ferment, and semiotic tumult of the 1990s, this trio of deliriously profane films glares at American youth culture and gives zero shits if it looks back.

Jul 25, 2023 — In his five collaborations with actor Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown, Boetticher presents an unsentimental vision of honor-bound men competing and banding together in a desolate landscape ruled by chance.

Dec 6, 2022 — Known for their austerity and shocking moments of violence, the Austrian director’s first three films cultivate a kind of humanism in their dogged refusal to coddle the viewer.

Nov 17, 2020 — Consider Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) as a very promiscuous romance picture above anything else—even if not all of its many objects of affection are what you might call properly human and there is no...

Nov 21, 2017 — Terry Gilliam plunges into the filth and absurdity of medieval England with this grim fairy-tale comedy.

Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.

Jul 25, 2014 — Erik Skjoldbjærg’s sun-drenched noir follows a detective trying to conceal his amoral actions amid unforgiving daylight.

Apr 25, 2011 — Brian De Palma brought hip, freewheeling funkiness to the American film renaissance of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Wised-up, cinema-savvy audiences across the country knew to seek out his movies for their scruffy wit, showmanship, and aesthetic innovation, not...

Apr 20, 2010 — In 1992, I went to Paris to see some movies that weren’t turning up on these shores, at least not as quickly as I wanted them to. At the time, it meant something particular to be going to Paris to...

May 27, 2014 — Howard Hawks was both a skillful Hollywood craftsman and a deeply personal artist, and this western of uncommon wit and grandeur is among his greatest and quirkiest films.