The Limits of Perfectionism
A look back at the cinema of Stanley Kubrick on the eve of a massive new Criterion retrospective.
Graham Daseler
· 27 min read
Cinema
A collection of 146 posts
They Walked in Line
A look back at the heyday of cinema’s lurid Nazisploitation subgenre, from ‘Ilsa’ to ‘The Night Porter.’
Charlotte Allen
· 31 min read
Spells that Sell
John Updike, Alice Hoffman, and the golden age of “witch lit.”
Kevin Mims
· 11 min read
‘The Battle of Algiers’ at Sixty
Watching Gillo Pontecorvo’s film six decades after its release permits a nuanced understanding of the events that it portrays, which was unavailable when it first came out.
Shalom Lappin
· 13 min read
Stories You Don’t Want to Be Told
A new exhibition curated by Lars von Trier provides a fascinating look at who and what has influenced one of the world’s most prodigiously gifted and provocative filmmakers.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 30 min read
Together Alone
American individualism and the western, from Fred Zinnemann and John Ford to Larry McMurtry and Taylor Sheridan.
Craig Clifford
· 8 min read
The Passion of Bess McNeill
Lars von Trier’s harrowing but resplendent story of suffering and grace turns thirty this year.
Charlotte Allen
· 21 min read
A Beautiful Odyssey, Made Dreary By Remorse
Christopher Nolan’s creation is a big movie in every technical sense. But inside, it is diminished and faded: heroes who aren’t allowed to be heroes and gods who aren’t allowed to be gods.
Charlotte Allen
· 14 min read
The Grift at the Gate
The Grift Industrial Complex targeted Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey—and got buried.
Giancarlo Sopo
· 8 min read
The Oldest Tradition in Art
Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, shot entirely on IMAX cameras, is the newest chapter in an old story: technological innovation creating new forms of art.
Claire Lehmann
· 7 min read
Strong Opinions
When critics start issuing dictates, they end up excluding broad swathes of art and culture as well as whole areas of human experience.
Stephen Akey
· 10 min read
The Truth Does Not Belong to Eight Billion People
Total disclosure, as Spielberg imagines it, is a beautiful thing to watch. It is also a fantasy.
Yaniv Regev
· 6 min read
Dangerous Liaisons and the #MeToo Wars
Nearly 250 years on, Laclos’s novel of seduction and treachery continues to scandalise.
Cathy Young
· 21 min read
Homeric Heresies
Outrage over a black Helen of Troy misunderstands the long Western tradition of radically reinventing classical myths.
Cathy Young
· 11 min read
Staring at the Sea
It would be very difficult to make a great film from a source as flawed as Camus’s novel, but Ozon has managed to make a very good one.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 19 min read