The Book of Life

Jan 31, 2005 — Like the movie’s rattletrap trucks lurching down the highway as they carry way-too-heavy loads, the characters in Jules Dassin’s brilliantly volatile Thieves’ Highway struggle under psychological and moral baggage until they can lay their burdens down. Working from a novel...

Jul 21, 1998 — Samurai III, Duel at Ganryu Island, is the last and best part of Hiroshi Inagaki’s Trilogy. In contrast to the earlier, more action-oriented Samurai I and II, this final section shows its hero Musashi (Toshiro Mifune) struggling with questions as...

Sep 23, 1993 — Two men, one woman and a boy. French director Bertrand Blier fashions out of this bizarre love quadrangle a film of seamless beauty, high farce and, finally, haunting majesty. To experience Get Out Your Handkerchiefs is to watch a master...

Nathan Heller, a staff writer at the New Yorker, is at work on a book about the Bay Area and the past fifty years of American life.

Oct 2, 2025 — In Wes Anderson’s romantic ode to journalism, the director grapples with the danger and horror inherent in any field of endeavor worth pursuing.

Apr 9, 2024 — In Steven Zaillian’s eight-episode series, Andrew Scott gives us what many find to be the definitive Tom Ripley.

Sep 30, 2022 — We’re reading interviews with Garret Bradley and Don Hertzfeldt and a marvelous account of the making of Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Feb 23, 2021 — Here’s the latest on projects coming from Todd Haynes, Chloé Zhao, David Cronenberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Claire Denis.

Jan 11, 2021 — Apted’s lasting legacy will be the Up series, one of the most moving and influential works of nonfiction ever made.

Oct 29, 2019 — The actor-turned-producer made Paramount a major player during the heyday of the New Hollywood.