737 Results
Fanny and Alexander: The Other Side
This sensuous, sprawling epic, which Ingmar Bergman intended to be his swan song, offers an effortless summing up of the themes—among them family, identity, and mortality—he'd spent a career exploring.
The Princess Bride: Let Me Sum Up
Ridiculous on the outside but full of truth on the inside, Rob Reiner’s fairy-tale classic is a childhood touchstone for generations of movie lovers.
Sisters: Psycho-Thriller, Qu’est-ce Que C’est?
Brian De Palma found his home in the psychological thriller with this chilling tale of murder, which twists genre conventions to investigate the perils of looking and the pitfalls of subjectivity.
Hour of the Wolf and From the Life of the Marionettes: The Strength of Surrender
Separated by more than a decade in Ingmar Bergman’s filmography, these two formally masterful dramas uncover the ugliness of male aggression and brutality.
Shampoo: First as Farce
Seen as a light-hearted farce upon its release, this star-studded comedy by Hal Ashby stands as one of Hollywood’s most prescient portraits of post-Watergate politics.
Crisis and A Ship to India: Bergman in the Making
Two early works by Ingmar Bergman show the Swedish master grappling with the conventions of melodrama, which would go on to influence his later explorations of spiritual torment.
Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day: The Utopia Channel
In a world vulnerable to authoritarianism, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s television epic stands as an example of how an artist can speak to a broad audience about revolutionary politics.
A Raisin in the Sun: Resistance and Joy
This faithful screen adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s legendary play explores a wide range of perspectives on working-class black life, and over the years has inspired reactions just as diverse.
My Man Godfrey: The Right Kind of People
Once called “the great directorial genius of Hollywood” by Carole Lombard, Gregory La Cava struck comedy gold with this mix of madcap high jinks, irresistible romance, and social commentary.
The Tree of Life: Let the Wind Speak
The imitation of nature becomes a devotional act in Terrence Malick’s cinema, which reaches sublime heights in this exploration of childhood, memory, and grief.
Cold Water: Dancing on the Ruins
Fueled by the rebellious sounds of rock and roll, Olivier Assayas’s long-unavailable breakthrough film is a remarkably unsentimental journey through the memories of youth.
Memories of Underdevelopment: Imaging History
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea brought cinema to the center of Cuban society with this richly ambiguous portrait of postrevolutionary Havana.
Smithereens: Breakfast at the Peppermint Lounge
A haven for punks and drifters, 1980s downtown New York is captured in all its grit and romance in Susan Seidelman’s Palme d’Or–nominated debut feature.
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez: A Cinematic Corrido
Reimagining the story of a Mexican American folk hero, this revisionist western ushered in a new era in both Chicano and independent filmmaking.
A Matter of Life and Death: The Too-Muchness of It All
A feast of sumptuous color and cinematic imagination, Powell and Pressburger’s postwar masterpiece is also a powerful reckoning with recent history.
sex, lies, and videotape: Some Kind of Skin Flick
Flesh has rarely been as alive on-screen as it is in Steven Soderbergh’s feature debut, an intimate drama that changed the face of American independent film.
No, But I Saw the Game
In this essay originally published in the New Yorker, Roger Angell hails Ron Shelton’s comic ode to baseball as one of the few movies to capture the essence of the sport.
Dragon Inn: Poised for Battle
The martial-arts film was never the same after King Hu got his hands on it, reinventing the genre with subtle editing and dazzling choreography.
Where Credit Is Due
Josef von Sternberg may have been one of cinema’s original micromanagers, but his films are testaments to longstanding collaborations with brilliant artists and technicians.
Female Trouble: Spare Me Your Morals
John Waters’ favorite among his early works is both an assault on political correctness and a no-holds-barred expression of gay militancy.
The Devil Is in the Details
During a period when studios gave him carte blanche, Josef von Sternberg created a sublime cinematic language that shrugged off one orthodoxy after another.
El Sur: A Complete Incomplete Film
At a time when Spain was trying to leave its past behind, master filmmaker Víctor Erice transported viewers back to the post–Civil War era, examining its traumas through the eyes of a child.
Bowling for Columbine: By Any Means Necessary
A galvanizing mix of polemic and entertainment, Michael Moore’s look at the American gun obsession is as chillingly relevant today as when it was released.
Mistress of Ceremonies
Marlene Dietrich’s sexually authoritative, coolly insolent persona was the product of meticulous screen craft.