Every frame of Raiders of the Lost Ark contains an enduring iconography, not only because from scene to scene the picture surges with nonstop energy and craft, but because the production embraces a pa...

In the darkness loom horrible unknowns from our nightmares or from the blackest regions of our imagination, and in such unthinkable obscurity is where horror derives its greatest power. These fears re...

Take a vacation from your humdrum daily life. The Hôtel de la Plage, an exquisite French resort, offers a sleepy beach, tennis courts, meals included, and your usual assemblage of civil, middle-class ...

A convergence of art, layered textuality, and entertainment that has never been surpassed in the history of filmmaking, Seven Samurai represents Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s most optimistic inspec...

Perhaps the most elegant of all romantic comedy filmmakers, Ernst Lubitsch made blithe comedies about infidelity, satires on the struggle between desire and romantic idealism. To put it bluntly, Lubit...

Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels begins with the finale of another motion picture, a film within the film. On the screen, a young vagabond and a railway yard boss wrestle atop a speeding trai...

Manifest Destiny once signified the American persona and compelled settlers to cross punishing terrain in a professed duty of expansionism. On the pretense of a national movement, or perhaps a moral m...

Science-fiction is about creating intricate worlds and using those worlds to emphasize a discernible difference from our own. Whether the differences are political, societal, or technological, the gen...

François Truffaut called Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious “the quintessential Hitchcock film,” as if there could be just one. Truffaut’s wise assessment in the face of Hitchcock’s preeminent Psycho or Ver...