In his essential Jerry Lewis essay “The Jerriad: A Clown Painting,” film critic B. Kite discusses the lineage of classic clowns like Chaplin, Keaton,…
Kent Jones once wrote that Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s 1999 film Rosetta had “a fearsome unity, an unshakable commitment to rendering the contours of…
“Whatever was going to happen has already happened,” says the protagonist of Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut feature, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca). This…
The first image of Agnes Varda’s 1965 film Le Bonheur (meaning “happiness” in English) is that of a yellow sunflower beaming in the radiant light…
…Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of…
Over a decade before the Coen Brothers released their neo-noir, blood-soaked vision of Americana, Blood Simple, Terrence Malick’s Badlands etched into the public consciousness…
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an early entry in what’s now a sprawling, multimedia franchise that includes TV, video games, and graphic novels. But…
Director William Friedkin is known as a ‘big’ personality, loud and aggressive and bellicose. He’s been called a bully more often than not (Nat…
In 1964, the Brazilian Armed Forces — with support from the United States government — took up measures to overthrow democratically elected leaders of…
Innocence and experience materialize in the poetry of William Blake as opposing forces; the former embodied within natural objects, passions and love, whereas the…
Ensconced in the forest, enfolded by lush, verdant foliage, a spider’s web glints, caught in the halation of the sun; the glistening, intricate pattern…
Lou Ye’s Summer Palace is an exasperating experience, full of interesting ideas and an incendiary political backdrop but falling victim to clichés of poeticized romantic…
In 1987, Margaret Thatcher made her infamous assertion that “there is no such thing as society” in order to espouse her doctrine of methodological…
“You who go, you will return / You who sleep, you will rise / You who walk, you will be resurrected.” So begins The…
In Dario Argento’s Deep Red, the piercing visions of a Jewish-German telepath (Macha Méril) serve as an embodiment of this Italian master’s worldview: to look is…
It seems natural to react with bewildered laughter when watching Scanners. The sight of actors contorting themselves with pained screams and Dick Smith’s visceral special…
Stanley Kubrick’s final film is one of the least-sexy films ever made about sex. Libidinous, yes, and full of naked bodies in salacious motion,…
Jean Luc-Godard’s career came to an end in 1967, with Weekend — only for it to rise again out of the ashes, and for the…