The Wind: Battling the Elements

Lillian Gish. Photo: MGM One of the last masterpieces of the silent era, The Wind is set in a Texan landscape that almost looks like science fiction. But Sweetwater is…

The Brutalist: After Buchenwald

Adrien Brody. Photo: A24 That running time may cause some hesitation. That’s not including a fifteen-minute long intermission that’s part of the film, like in the old days. I decided…

Paths of Glory: Seething with Rage

Kirk Douglas. Photo: United Artists ”The paths of glory lead but to the grave”. Famous words from Thomas Gray’s 1751 poem ”Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. Author Humphrey Cobb…

The Holdovers: Among Family

Dominic Sessa and Paul Giamatti. Photo: Focus Features That Alexander Payne is a child of the 1970s is not something to be taken lightly. As The Holdovers begins, a film…

Citizen Kane: Billionaire and Enigma

Orson Welles. Photo: RKO When Sight and Sound recently polled critics all over the world for another list of greatest films, there were dramatic changes. Jeanne Dielman (1975) came out…

Worst Person in the World: Millennial Angst

Renate Reinsve. Photo: Oslo Pictures As Joachim Trier was making his final chapter in a trilogy of films that began with Reprise (2006) and continued with Oslo, August 31st (2011),…

Hamlet: Besting Henry V

Laurence Olivier. Photo: Rank Film As Ethel Barrymore opened the envelope at the 1949 Oscars and learned that Hamlet had been selected by her peers as Best Picture of the…

Rebecca: A Haunted House

Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson. Photo: United Artists As Alfred Hitchcock was making his first Hollywood movie, producer David O. Selznick tried his best to influence the British director. Selznick…

The 400 Blows: This Boy’s Life

Jean-Pierre Léaud. Photo: Cocinor I do recall watching this movie in film class, but it didn’t have that much of an impact on me at the time. I find that…

Stagecoach: Introducing John Wayne

Andy Devine, John Wayne and Louise Platt. Photo: United Artists Today, we remember John Ford as a great director of Westerns. In 1939, that wasn’t really the case. Ford hadn’t…