Best British Movies of All Time: Get Carter or Lawrence of Arabia or The Third Man? That depends on who gets polled. And when, by whom.
-
What are the best British films of all time? Starring Michael Caine, Mike Hodges’ violent thriller Get Carter is critics’ surprise #1 choice, while women-focused titles are completely absent.
-
A painter and his househelper-turned-subject find an unexpected spiritual and sensual bond by way of their mutual sensibility to light and color. A fictionalized account of the creation of one…
-
A man is dead. Who among the greedy, ruthless, amoral singing-and-dancing suspects stuck in the snowbound countryside mansion has done it? 8 women is an acquired taste, bien sûr. What…
-
While most film directors struggle – and fail – to create screen magic, Laurent Firode succeeds beautifully with his romantic-existential comedy Le Battement d’ailes du papillon / Happenstance. The key…
-
A mysterious con job that seems to be a cover for something ominously more dangerous forms the basis for director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie’s complex suspense thriller The…
-
One of the masterworks of world cinema, Trois couleurs: Rouge / Three Colors: Red is the final segment of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois couleurs trilogy – the other two being Bleu…
-
Forget Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and anything else he and his myriad imitators have done. C’est arrivé près de chez vous / Man Bites dog is the real thing. Directed…
-
Before he set out to make only ugly, tedious trash like G.I. Jane (1997), Gladiator (2000), and Black Hawk Down (2001), Ridley Scott directed at least three cinematic gems: Alien,…
-
A film by one of the world’s best directors, Gianni Amelio, the Academy Award-nominated Porte aperte / Open Doors tells the harrowing story of an assistant judge who tries to…
-
Despite a not too convincingly debauched Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, played with itsy-bitsy-cutesy flair by Academy Award nominee Tom Hulce, the visually stunning Amadeus is an intriguing treatise on the coexistence…
-
Cinematographer Carroll Ballard’s second directorial effort (following The Black Stallion in 1979), Never Cry Wolf is a stunningly beautiful meditation on nature and on life itself. Based on the true…
-
Costa-Gavras made a reputation for himself as a director of provocative, controversial political thrillers. His 1969 anti-Greek junta film, Z, became the first non-English language film in more than thirty…
-
Once upon a time, before becoming involved in bloated mainstream Hollywood productions, Jonathan Demme directed a little gem called Melvin and Howard (as in Hughes, the oil millionaire-turned-film producer-turned-total nut…
-
1975 is the only year in which all films nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award also figure in our Best of the Best list. The five films are: Barry…
-
Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. “You may think you know what you’re dealing with,” one character admonishes sleazy private detective Jake Gittes, “but believe me, you don’t.” Released shortly after the…
-
Musicals tend to be either vacuous and light as air (e.g., An American in Paris) or vacuous and heavy as lead (e.g., Doctor Dolittle). Cabaret fits into neither category. Set…
-
Veteran actress-screenwriter-playwright Ruth Gordon enjoyed a major film career renaissance following her Oscar-winning devilish turn in Rosemary’s Baby in 1968. In Harold and Maude, the 75-year-old Gordon had her first…
-
Quite possibly Bernardo Bertolucci’s best film, The Conformist / Il Conformista is a first-rate psychological thriller that associates fascistic tendencies with repressed sexuality. Politicians everywhere should take a good look…
-
On paper, there is precious little that is innovative about Jacques Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg / The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It’s just your usual story of a handsome boy…
-
After Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), Robert Wise’s The Haunting is the best haunted house story ever filmed. But is the house really haunted or is everything taking place inside…
-
Lawrence of Arabia is generally the most admired motion picture released in 1962, while The Manchurian Candidate is the most admired strictly political film to come out that year. Unfairly…
-
Better known for his early neo-realist films Bicycle Thieves / Ladri di biciclette (1948) and Shoeshine / Sciuscià (1946), Vittorio De Sica created a harrowing portrait of the horrors of war…
-
The guilty pleasure of all guilty pleasures. An unabashedly sentimental story about East meets West, a bland performance by leading man William Holden (Sunset Blvd., Network), an awful (and awfully…
-
Considered by many one of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s lesser films, The Barefoot Contessa is a classy, intelligently written, and generally well acted morality tale. Inspired by the life of Rita…
FILM Gosford Park d: Robert Altman; scr: Julian Fellowes Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India d: Ashutosh Gowariker; scr: Mulholland Dr. d, scr: David Lynch CHECK THESE OUT…
Jane Campion’s hauntingly beautiful The Piano is one of the rare successful attempts to bring the Gothic sensitivity of the Brontë sisters to the screen. Holly Hunter is superb as…
Winner of the 1985 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, Luis Puenzo’s La Historia oficial / The Official Story is deeply disturbing in its unflinching depiction of the evil lurking…
A superb cast that includes Academy Award nominee Fernanda Montenegro (Central do Brasil / Central Station) brings to life the conflicted characters of Eles Não Usam Black-Tie / They Don’t…
Throughout most of his career, Greek-born director Costa-Gavras has set his sights on political themes. With the Academy Award-winning Z (1969), he attacked the right-wing military junta that seized power…
Set in the amoral Swinging London of the 1960s, Darling is a morality tale that holds up surprisingly well. Julie Christie plays a beautiful model who sleeps her way to…
Possibly the best ghost story ever filmed, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, an adaptation of Henry Jamess’ novel The Turn of the Screw, offers spooky apparitions, demented religiosity, repressed sexuality (in…