The Playlist

The story of how an innovative idea was turned into the streaming-service behemoth the world knows as Spotify, at a time when the music industry struggled with illegal downloading. The…

L’Eclisse

The third part in the trilogy that began with L’Avventura (1960) is equally marked by existential angst, as Vittoria (Monica Vitti, who’s been a constant in all three films) ends…

Coming Home: How to Have an Orgasm

Jon Voight and Jane Fonda. Photo: United Artists One of the most important moments in this critically lauded but perhaps slightly forgotten film is a sex scene. Jane Fonda, who…

Downton Abbey: A New Era

In 1928, Violet (Maggie Smith) surprises everyone by revealing that she has a villa in the south of France; at the same time, a film production company asks the family…

The Offer

In the late 1960s, Albert Ruddy (Miles Teller) manages to talk the head of production (Matthew Goode) at Paramount into letting him produce a film adaptation of a novel that’s…

Dances With Wolves: Finding Your Tribe

Kevin Costner. Photo: Orion Pictures If Dances With Wolves had been released today, poisonous social media activism and cable news outlets would have made it part of the culture war,…

La Notte

The second film in a trilogy that began with L’Avventura (1960) starts out with a couple (Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau) visiting a dying friend at a hospital in Milan; over…

Cavalcade: 20th Century Blues

Herbert Mundin, Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook and Una O’Connor. Photo: Fox Film The fact that Cavalcade is one of the lowest rated Best Picture winners on IMDb is not really…

Boiling Point

Welcome to spend an hour and a half at a busy, posh London restaurant where everything is about to reach the boiling point, not least for head chef Andy Jones…

Ordinary People: Absent Mother

Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. Photo: Paramount Judith Guest gave up her teaching job to focus on writing her first novel, the one that would become ”Ordinary People”, trying…