Feb 19, 2025 — Gus Van Sant’s lyrical exploration of addiction and faith—adapted from an autobiographical novel by James Fogle—influenced cinematic drug depictions throughout the nineties and helped to initiate a wave of American independent filmmaking.

The actor talks about Steven Soderbergh’s use of nonlinear storytelling in Traffic, shares how Sid & Nancy continues to inspire him as a performer, and praises the visual poetry of Drugstore Cowboy.

Jan 20, 2026 — This month, leap into a century of cinema’s greatest stunts, feel the ache of thwarted romance and bittersweet yearning, or get into trouble with the Depression-era hustlers of Mervyn LeRoy’s pre-Code films.

Jan 29, 2024 — Get ready for Valentine’s Day with a collection of otherworldly love stories, and celebrate Black History Month with a selection of films exploring African American history.

Mar 26, 2024 — In Gus Van Sant’s wickedly funny tale of suburban depravity, Nicole Kidman plays a vacuous weather reporter whose hunger for fame anticipates our own era of digital celebrity.

Jan 20, 2018 — “Twenty years ago,” begins Variety’s Peter Debruge, “Robin Williams approached director Gus Van Sant about developing irreverent Portland cartoonist John Callahan’s memoir, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, with the intention of playing its author—a quadriplegic skirt-chaser, wheelchair...

Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...

Oct 7, 2015 — It’s night in the desert. Mike (River Phoenix), a teenage hustler given to bouts of narcolepsy, and Scott (Keanu Reeves), a slumming preppy prince, are huddled over a campfire. “I just want to kiss you, man,” says Mike softly. The...

Nov 28, 2010 — “What we need are good old American—and that’s not to be confused with European—Art Films.” So declared the then twenty-nine-year-old beatnik Method actor Dennis Hopper in an unpublished 1965 manifesto. “The whole damn country’s one big real place to utilize...

Jan 12, 2016 — In German filmmaker Wim Wenders’s high-strung thriller, adapted from two Patricia Highsmith novels, Dennis Hopper plays sociopathic con man Tom Ripley as a “hopped-up elf from hell” who works his charms on a winsome and guileless Bruno Ganz.