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‘Homicide’: David Mamet’s Soul-Searching Thriller as a Modern-Day Classic
In the course of the last forty years, the Chicago-born Pulitzer-winning American playwright, screenwriter and director David Mamet steadily built his name with the reputation of one of the most...
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‘Obsession’: When De Palma Stepped Out of Hitchcock’s Shadow
Released in the late summer of 1976, more than a year since the end of production due to Columbia Pictures minor objections to some of the film’s controversial themes and motifs, Brian De Palma’s...
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‘All the President’s Men’: Following the Money to Become One of the Most...
When Robert Redford thought of an idea to make a film about the dogged efforts of two Washington Post reporters working relentlessly to uncover the truth about the Watergate scandal, he envisioned a...
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John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’: The Story of an SF Horror Game-Changer
It’s always nice to see your films appreciated even decades after they were made, William Friedkin told us recently, but films are usually made for contemporary audiences. John Carpenter, the great...
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‘The Parallax View’: Pakula’s Unsettling Examination of the Post-Compliant...
The seventies were a unique period in the history of the United States, with general dissatisfaction with the government and distrust of the system generously fueled by Nixon’s Watergate fiasco that...
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‘The Fisher King’: A Sobering Fairytale that Radiates with Trauma, Warmth and...
When Robin Williams died, the feeling that shook the filmgoing community, and was instantly shared by us here on C&B, wasn’t the same emotion of sadness and respect that people usually feel when...
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‘Frenzy’: Hitchcock’s Return to Perfection in His Penultimate Film
Having turned in a couple of ill-received films delving into the matters of political intrigue, Alfred Hitchcock went back to Britain and, practically at the very end of his career, made another great...
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Robert Altman’s ‘The Player’: An Intelligent and Hilarious Hollywood Satire...
After spending a whole decade in an unofficial exile after several weak box office results, Robert Altman returned to the Hollywood studio system in 1992, when The Player blew everyone away. It would...
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The Coens’‘Blood Simple’: A Fantastic Debut Propelling the Creation of a...
The filmmaking debut of the Coen brothers, Blood Simple, is a blood-soaked neo-noir thriller set in Texas and characterized by unexpected humor, colorful characters, solid acting and a viciously...
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‘The Seventh Seal’: An Enthralling Philosophical Work of Art Made By One of...
Ingmar Bergman decided to make something completely different upon witnessing the success of his comedy Smiles of a Summer Night in Cannes, where the film had won the jury’s special reward. “I mustn’t...
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‘Psycho’: The Proto-Slasher that Brought On a Revolution in Cinema
The image of a shabby motel in the middle of nowhere, by-passed by any relevant roads and inhabited by disturbing, weird or antisocial characters. The brutal murder committed by a merciless lunatic...
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‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’: Andrew...
When The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford came out in 2007, a lot of people believed a new golden age of the Western genre began, with both financially and critically successful...
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‘Eyes Wide Shut’: A Tense, Nightmarish Exploration of Marriage and Sexuality...
Almost a decade passed since Full Metal Jacket hit the theaters, and Stanley Kubrick lived a sort of a reclusive life in London, distanced from the press. It was then that he felt he could turn his...
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‘Bad Day at Black Rock’: John Sturges’ Audacious and Culturally Significant...
One of the biggest compliments that John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock received was when Paul Thomas Anderson commented on its educational value in terms of sharpening one’s filmmaking craft. “Work...
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‘Billy, How Did You Do It?’: A Unique and Rewarding Window into the Mind of...
The Austrian-born filmmaker who would become one of the most important figures of American cinema, Billy Wilder could have been proud of a rich career filled with many movies now deemed true classics....
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‘Escape from New York’: John Carpenter’s Thrilling, Pumped-Up Ride through...
In the post-Watergate period of America struggling with insecurity, distrust and national embarrassment, USC-educated filmmaker John Carpenter wrote a script for a dystopian futuristic action film...
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‘Big John’: A 75-Minute Precious Exploration of John Carpenter’s Life, Work...
In France, I’m an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain, a genre film director; and in the USA, a bum. These are the famous words of John Carpenter, one of the most influential horror film...
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‘Notorious’: Hitchcock’s Mature and Intricate Espionage Masterpiece
Sometime in August 1944, while Alfred Hitchcock was having lunch with David O. Selznick’s story editor Margaret McDonnell, the idea for Notorious was born. Hitchcock wanted to make a film about...
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‘The Trial’: Orson Welles’ Exhibition of Paranoia, Illogicality and Personal...
Refusing to call it an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s classic novel published in 1925, not even willing to describe the film as based on the book, the great Orson Welles claimed Kafka was something close...
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‘They Live’: John Carpenter’s Brilliantly Simple and Hugely Enjoyable Assault...
During the 1980s, John Carpenter stumbled upon a comic book based on Ray Nelson’s 1963 short story entitled ‘Eight O’Clock in the Morning.’ Enraged by what he saw in Ronald Reagan’s America, the...
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