Jodie Foster’s Coming of Age
The actress looks back at the time a shooter attempted to assassinate President Reagan on her behalf—and discusses the unexpected perks of being an older woman in Hollywood
Of Human Bondage
Released more than 60 years ago, Dr. No, the first entry in the supercharged spy series, could have been just another B-rate action film. And then Sean Connery strolled in
For the Ages
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made 24 bold and imaginative films before falling out of favor. Now the duo that Martin Scorsese and Tilda Swinton credit as influences are getting their due
In Search of Misspent Youth
Hormones, horsepower, and hamburgers: the making of American Graffiti
Black Emanuelle Matters
A saucy sexploitation-movie series is being re-assessed as a groundbreaking feminist work in an exhaustive new boxed set
Good Help Is Hard to Find
Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter’s cult masterpiece, The Servant, turns 60
A Man Out of Time
How Robert Altman and a down-on-his-luck Elliott Gould re-invented the detective movie
Phases of the Moon
Under the Cherry Moon, Prince’s directorial debut—a black-and-white passion project set on the glistening Côte d’Azur and starring Kristin Scott Thomas—bombed when it premiered in 1986. Did the critics miss the point?
Popcorn Presidents
The movies watched in the White House provide fascinating insights into the mindset—angry, affable, aggrieved—of its inhabitants
Moment of Truth
Do historical films and TV programs need to be accurate?
Absolutely Normal Chaos
Is Ridley Scott the bluntest man in the movie business? On the press tour for Napoleon, the director swears, shouts, and says whatever comes to mind
Stanley Kubrick’s Waterloo
Having just tackled the end of the world and the mysteries of the universe, the obsessive director set his sights on Napoleon. Tens of thousands of index cards later, he waved the white flag
From The Office to the Lab
Lee Eisenberg knows funny. But he and his wife, Emily Jane Fox, learned a lot working together on Lessons in Chemistry
Nia DaCosta
With The Marvels, 34-year-old Nia DaCosta is now the youngest director of a Marvel movie, and the first Black woman to have a go at the franchise
Hollywood’s Conundrum
What will happen to the new World War II films as war rages in the Middle East?
Oklahoma, Not O.K.
Martin Scorsese’s erratic Killers of the Flower Moon takes Hollywood’s conflicting views of the Sooner State to the downbeat limit
Aria Mia Loberti
With her screen debut, in All the Light We Cannot See, the former academic is forging a path for actors in the blind community
The Little Film That Could
Despite a minimal budget and pandemic lockdowns, The Great Escaper and its octogenarian stars managed to make their way to the screen
The Plains’ Greats
Alexander Payne gives the author a Hollywood master class on wheels, with stops at the childhood homes of Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda, and Marlon Brando
A Raging Bull’s Fighting Words
Robert De Niro has a new baby and a celebrated new film—his 10th with Martin Scorsese—but what the acclaimed actor really wants to discuss is the crazy and absurd phenomenon of Donald Trump
Hit and Run
When writers on the TV series Fauda pitched a storyline eerily similar to the recent terrorist invasion of Israel, the show’s creators dismissed it as unrealistic. Now the unthinkable has become a reality
Phony Business
J. D. Salinger refused to let his novels and stories be adapted for film and television. But that hasn’t stopped some directors
The Devil’s in the Details
From Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God to the novels of Elena Ferrante—where has this insatiable appetite for all things Naples come from?
An Elegy Wrapped in a Comedy
A new book chronicles the rise of Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I from box-office failure to endlessly quotable classic
