A mixture of social realism and otherworldly fantasy, Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu takes place during a time of civil war in sixteenth-century Japan. The director’s sweeping tale of earthly humanity and s...

“It figures it would be somethin’ like this,” says the hero of John Carpenter’s They Live. Nada, a homeless man named after the Spanish word for “nothing,” has just discovered an alien conspiracy. Whe...

In The Thin Blue Line, director Errol Morris investigates the wrongful conviction of Texan Randall Adams, who, in place of a more obvious suspect, was arrested for killing a police officer. Upon its r...

Environmentalist and self-appointed bear savior Timothy Treadwell shot most of the footage in Grizzly Man, yet the film is perhaps the finest and most characteristic of Werner Herzog’s documentaries. ...

Bicycle Thieves takes place at a very specific time under a unique series of social conditions that shape both its narrative and its embrace of the Neorealist message. Though its specificity may precl...

Rather than a picturesque park or square, a festering cesspool resides at the hub of the neighborhood in Drunken Angel, the 1948 release and first major cinematic accomplishment by Japanese master Aki...

A work of structural and thematic brilliance, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low does not involve samurai or journeys into Japan’s distant past to create relevant historical parallels, as the director’s pi...

The Player opens with a crane shot that lasts over seven minutes, all filmed as one long take, much of it improvised, during which each moment sets up the film’s many plotlines and characters. The sho...

In Nashville, Robert Altman takes pieces of country music tesserae and assembles a sprawling mosaic that, grouted by the history and music of the Tennessee capital, reflects and anticipates the presen...