Oct 29, 2018 — Professor Jeff Smith breaks down how François Truffaut’s loving tribute to the crime genre Shoot the Piano Player uses anamorphic widescreen compositions to stylish effect.

Jul 30, 2013 — A genuine American movie legend, the eighty-seven-year-old producer and director Roger Corman has been in the film business since the early 1950s. He is perhaps best known for the low-budget horror films he issued with remarkable speed in the early...

Aug 20, 2007 — David Mamet’s debut film was a welcome throwback to the primacy of character and careful story construction, at a time when narrative intricacy was in short supply on American movie screens.

Leonard Leff, emeritus professor of English at Oklahoma State University is the author of three books, including Hitchcock and Selznick (University of California Press, 1999). His essay on African Americans and Gone With the Wind appears in The Best American...

Movie critic Michael Sragow, the author of Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master, edited two volumes of James Agee’s prose for the Library of America. His documentary writing and coproducing credits include Image Makers: The Adventures of America’s Pioneer Cinematographers...

Jul 27, 2022 — Beat the heat with our extensive survey of Chinese representation in American film as well as tributes to Yaphet Kotto, David Gulpilil, and Myrna Loy.

Nov 6, 2025 — In the run-up to the release of Jay Kelly, the American Cinematheque presents a five-film series.

Feb 1, 1988 — Charles Laughton’s classic has the feel and the force of an American folk fable; yet, it also mixes rural humor with gothic humor, biblical quotation and Freudian symbolism, and everyday realities with a near-mythic confrontation between the forces of good...

May 9, 2005 — Les Blank’s documentary examines the interaction of premodern tribal existence with European modernity, epitomized by a movie narrative about the invidious clash of brute nature and a singular ego bent on his own mission of cultural enlightenment.

Mar 14, 2014 — Did You See This?• A Felliniesque life • A primer on African-American movie history • Errol Morris on the resuscitated A Brief History of Time • Vivian Kubrick’s photos of working with her dad • Winding through Wes Anderson’s world...