A
With Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick shot a brilliant satire like a straight thriller
For those who know Dr. Strangelove well, here’s a fun experiment: Watch it with the sound off, imagining that you’ve…
DVD Review
B+
Fantastic Planet looks as strange today as it must have 40 years ago
Originally released in 1973, René Laloux’s animated sci-fi parable Fantastic Planet still looks strikingly alien, over…
B+
Jean Renoir’s path to greatness began with La Chienne
In 1931, with a handful of silent shorts and features under his belt, director Jean Renoir made a tentative transition…
B+
Neither Warren Beatty nor Chris Rock could improve upon Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Originally released at a time of national anxiety—four months before Pearl Harbor—the comic fantasy Here Comes Mr.…
A-
Antonioni’s Le Amiche is an early gem that scarcely resembles his later ones
When a director settles on a unique vision of the world and then sticks to it forever after, early movies that don’t…
Criterion offers a loose trilogy from Wim Wenders, king of the road movie
A few years ago, Rian Johnson, who’s currently shooting the next Star Wars installment, joked on Twitter that “Looper …
A-
Robert Altman affectionately skewered Hollywood with The Player
Robert Altman’s adaptation of Michael Tolkin’s The Player—a novel that eviscerates ’80s Hollywood—begins with a lengthy…
A
Bogart goes boldly unhinged in the essential noir In A Lonely Place
Nicholas Ray’s 1950 film noir masterpiece In A Lonely Place barely reaches the one-minute mark before its protagonist,…
A-
Easy Rider ushered in a new generation of filmmakers not born to follow
As is often the case with pop touchstones, the experience of watching Easy Rider from start to finish is very different…
Robert Drew’s Kennedy films chart the evolution of American politics—and American documentary
Nowadays, anyone who can afford a smartphone carries a fairly decent video camera around with them 24/7, ready to shoot…
A
More than 70 years later, Brief Encounter remains intensely poignant
For all the romances the movies have given us, there are precious few that show two people gradually falling in love.…
B+
Barcelona applies the famous Whit Stillman wit to anti-Americanism
Whit Stillman tends to be cagey about when his movies take place. His 1990 debut, Metropolitan, claims to be set “not…
C-
A new Blu-ray makes a case for John Carpenter’s Village Of The Damned
A contract assignment, made to open the door for a remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon that sadly never came to…
A
Could Only Angels Have Wings be the greatest Hollywood movie of all time?
Cinephiles frequently cite 1939 as Hollywood’s greatest year, rattling off an impressive list of widely beloved…
A
Better late than never, the masterful A Brighter Summer Day comes to America
War And Peace comes up more than once during the four-hour sprawl of A Brighter Summer Day. One of the film’s…
A-
The Manchurian Candidate remains a thrilling classic of Hollywood paranoia
Released a year before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, The Manchurian Candidate held the title of Hollywood’s most…
B+
Paris Belongs To Us is an eerie gem of the French New Wave
In the summer of 1958, a 30-year-old film critic and amateur filmmaker named Jacques Rivette started shooting a movie…
B+
Pieces embodies the vulgar pleasures of exploitation horror
Who doesn’t love watching scantily clad women having their body parts sawed off? Lots of people, really: In its…
A-
To thrilling effect, I Knew Her Well never lets us inside its heroine’s head
There’s no indication whatsoever of who the “I” might be in I Knew Her Well, Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1965 film about an…
A
The Graduate’s acidic cringe comedy endures for another generation
Back in 1997, on the occasion of The Graduate‘s 30th anniversary, Roger Ebert wrote a revised review in which he…
