(This essay was expanded from a review published on November 21, 2014.) Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life features one of the most intricately detailed and affectionately realized worlds ever created...

Who Framed Roger Rabbit’s first sequence epitomizes the film’s seamless fusion of live-action and traditional hand-drawn animation, of noirish plotting and zany cartoon antics: The faces of Baby Herma...

Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, navigates an obstacle course at Quantico. Alone in the woods, she pulls herself up a hill by a rope, scales a vertical cargo net, and heads down a foggy trail wi...

A Man Escaped opens with a close-up on a pair of hands resting on knees in the backseat of a moving car. They lift and rotate as though their owner examines them and ponders what they might accomplish...

Amour begins with a stark contrast of image and meaning. Firefighters breach a door and search an apartment for a stench, which causes them to immediately cover their faces and open windows to clear t...

Michael Powell created a symphony of image, sound, and symbolism in Black Narcissus to establish a harmony between his aesthetics and Emeric Pressburger’s script. The British duo known as The Archers ...

North by Northwest distills Alfred Hitchcock’s obsessions, techniques, and themes into a singular, deliriously entertaining form. The legendary Master of Suspense piles a career’s worth of preoccupati...

Ganja & Hess is the phantasmagoric outpouring of a singular artist whose voice cannot be easily categorized. Written and directed by Bill Gunn, the 1973 film has a loose affiliation with vampires ...

Little Shop of Horrors has all the makings of an essential cult film. Released in 1986, during a decade steeped in nostalgia for the early days of rock-and-roll and Motown, the film combines those mus...