The Way of Drama

Dec 17, 2017 — Norwegian director Joachim Trier talks about how Louis Malle’s 1963 masterpiece The Fire Within inspired his sophomore feature Oslo, August 31st.

Nov 14, 2017 — Donna Deitch combined tropes of lesbian pulp romance with the sheen of mainstream filmmaking in her beloved debut feature.

Aug 8, 2017 — The disheveled drifter at the heart of Mike Leigh’s 1993 masterpiece collides with a disturbed young man in this brilliantly acted, semi-screwball scene.

Apr 22, 2014 — Carl Theodor Dreyer’s spare and modern visual style perfectly complements this comic and soulful domestic comeuppance story.

Oct 23, 2013 — If there’s one quality that separates John Cassavetes’s movies from almost everybody else’s, it’s the density of detail in the storytelling. His films need to be read closely, from beginning to end. There are no lulls with Cassavetes, no lapses...

Aug 27, 2013 — Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II–era high-wire act is a profound take on the absurdity cruelty of civilization and a perfect black comedy to boot.

Nov 16, 2010 — The Night of the Hunter (1955)—the first film directed by Charles Laughton and also, sadly, the last—is among the greatest horror movies ever made, and perhaps, of that select company, the most irreducibly American in spirit. It’s about those venerable...

Feb 19, 2007 — A powerful document of anti-Nazi propaganda, Powell and Pressburger’s war drama consolidated their partnership and showed a way forward for British cinema.

Jan 5, 2006 — Akira Kurosawa appreciated Shake­speare’s knack for linking the private and the political, threading a tale of corruption and revenge through a tangle of blood ties.

Sep 6, 1999 — The subject of loneliness and the observation of the isolated person has always interested me. Even as a child, I couldn’t help but notice those who didn’t fit in for one reason or another—myself included. In life, and for my...