The Blue Angel

Sep 4, 2019 — The late actor became an icon of his generation with this moody, brilliant non-performance, informed by his intimate knowledge of chaos and death.

Aug 24, 2011 — NOTE: The following essay contains spoilers. Not long into Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine (2007), a melodrama about suffering, salvation, and the dangerously blurred line between belief and madness, the heroine encounters the first of several challenges to her way of...

Feb 23, 2012 — Author John Voelker (a.k.a. Robert Traver) met musician Duke Ellington on the set of Anatomy of a Murder; he wrote this piece about the experience for the Detroit News Sunday Magazine in 1967.

Nov 18, 2025 — A pre-Code aviation epic that makes pioneering use of the era’s innovations in cinematic color and sound, Howard Hughes’s directorial debut was Hollywood’s first modern portrait of World War I.

Dec 9, 2023 — This week we’re revisiting the work of Tolkin, Bogdanovich, and Borowczyk and reading profiles of Isabelle Huppert and Nicolas Cage.

Mar 25, 2021 — One of the most beloved performers of the 1970s staged two comebacks in his later years.

Jun 18, 2001 — Pent-up, unfulfilled sexuality spills onto the screen in Douglas Sirk’s sumptuous melodrama.

Mar 18, 2024 — It’s an eclectic bunch this month, featuring a new play, a ban on the color green, and Godzilla.

Apr 13, 2023 — Combining elements of soft-core porn and film noir, one of the most popular Hollywood genres of the 1980s and ’90s captured the fraught aspirationalism and sexual mores of the era.

Sep 2, 2022 — Spend the holiday weekend with Hugo Fregonese, Serge Daney, Bertolt Brecht, Michael Schultz, and Todd Haynes.