Contrary to popular (mis)conception, great horror doesn’t often come from trying to evoke fear from viewers. The audience is a vague, nebulous concept, and trying…
Even more than most of the genuine oddities that have managed to find their way into the that motley crew known as the Canon (whatever…
While nowadays regulated to the lowly status of a legacy act, mainly trotted out whenever some late-night comedian wants to make some forced joke about…
Arnaud Desplechin’s third feature, Esther Kahn, premiered to mixed reviews at the 2000 edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Originally clocking in at 152 minutes, the…
If one were to name the auteur who most avidly committed to the integrity of mise-en-scène and who was always truly passionate in polemical defenses…
Tsui Hark presents something of a glorious contradiction, the kind that nevertheless hewed closely to the norm in the crazed grandeur of Hong Kong during…
It might open on a funeral, but Secrets & Lies is quietly one of the warmest and most optimistic entries in Mike Leigh’s vaunted filmography…
If recent interviews are any indication, John Carpenter seems to have settled into a comfortable semi-retirement consisting of video games, weed, and collecting money from…
Musicals have never exactly been the easiest genre of film to market. 1969’s magnificent flop Hello, Dolly! put an end to the musical’s life as…
On the set of 1946’s Duel in the Sun, King Vidor was constantly assailed by a positively megalomaniacal David O. Selznick, who extrapolated new subplots…
The distance between Cam’ron’s debut album Confessions of Fire and his fourth one, canonical 2000s NYC rap opus Purple Haze, isn’t so great, a matter…
When your oeuvre is primarily composed of operas, it’s easy to regard a short chamber piece as your most accessible work. This is the mentality…
Nitrate Kisses opens with a lengthy quote by Adrienne Rich, stating that “whatever is unnamed will become […] not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.” The two…
On February 22 of 2021, a major musical rupture occurred: Daft Punk, the mythic French house duo, through an “Epilogue” video casually posted to their…
“This boy… and this girl… were never properly introduced to the world we live in.” So begins the dramatic voice-over of Nicholas Ray’s debut feature,…
“A little more passion, though, would have been appreciated.” So says Dave Kehr of American — by way of London by way of France —…
Calling Tsai Ming-liang’s body of work interconnected doesn’t begin to cover the throughlines that have developed over the span of more than three decades. One…
André De Toth is one of the great, unsung directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. As Fred Camper noted in a 1997 essay bemoaning his lack…
Bob Dylan’s 31st studio album was released to lofty expectations on September 11, 2001. Listeners who managed to snag a copy on that fateful day…
Walter Hill famously bristled at his film Southern Comfort being referred to as a Vietnam allegory; such denial has had him labeled as inexplicably stubborn,…