Apr 27 2025
Few filmmakers made history feel as physical as Theo Angelopoulos. In his films, the past does not remain safely behind the characters. It drifts through misty landscapes, follows people across borders, interrupts journeys, reshapes families, and sometimes seems to occupy the same space as the present. Born in Athens on April 27, 1935, Angelopoulos became …
Apr 18 2025
Born in London on April 18, 1946, Hayley Mills became one of the most recognizable young movie stars of the 1960s. With her bright, natural screen presence and an ability to move easily between comedy, adventure, and drama, she became closely associated with a remarkable run of Walt Disney live-action films while also building a …
Apr 16 2025
Inspired after seeing this on Soviet Visuals and Folklore Film Fest‘s #SovietFilmWednesday, this was the first Soviet film I shared a little over four years ago, and it is still one of my favorites. What can I say, I love rain and cats, and the illustrations are beautiful, so this seemed like the perfect starting place for …
Apr 09 2025
Jean-Paul Belmondo did not look like the polished movie star French cinema was supposed to produce. His nose had been broken during his years as a boxer. His smile could turn from charming to mischievous in an instant. He slouched, smoked, joked, ran through streets, climbed buildings, threw punches, flirted with danger, and seemed permanently …
Apr 04 2025
Rain falls across an empty landscape. Water drips through the ruins of a building. Wind moves suddenly through a field of grass. A horse wanders into view. Fire burns slowly while someone watches in silence. A childhood memory appears without warning and then disappears again. In the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, moments like these can …
Mar 23 2025
“I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.” -Akira Kurosawa Rain pours through a ruined gate. Seven warriors stand against an approaching band of horsemen. A dying bureaucrat sits alone on a playground swing. A samurai waits calmly while two rival gangs destroy one another. A wealthy executive looks down …
Mar 21 2025
A man meets a woman. He talks to her. Then he talks some more. He explains what he believes, what he wants, what he intends to do, and why his behavior is completely reasonable. The longer he speaks, the clearer it becomes that he may understand himself far less than he thinks. That deceptively simple …
Mar 05 2025
Pier Paolo Pasolini never seemed interested in making life easier for his audience, his critics, his political allies, or himself. He was a poet who became a novelist, a novelist who became a filmmaker, a Marxist who remained fascinated by Christianity, an atheist who made one of cinema’s most moving films about Christ, and an …
Feb 19 2025
Some film music announces itself with enormous orchestras, booming percussion, and melodies designed to tell an audience exactly what to feel. Shigeru Umebayashi often takes the opposite approach. A few strings, a slow waltz, a repeated phrase, or a melody that seems to circle endlessly around an unresolved emotion can become more powerful than an …
Feb 06 2025
Before François Truffaut became one of the directors who changed cinema, he was the young man sitting in the dark watching everyone else’s films. Movies offered him something childhood often had not: escape, companionship, excitement, and a world that seemed larger than the difficult streets and apartments of postwar Paris. Eventually, watching movies was not …
