“Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia” is a welcome reintroduction to one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century.  Gore Vidal made his name as a writer, but he was really so much more – provocateur, pundit, political candidate, …Read more

If you’re feeling some film festival withdrawal after Tribeca but can’t afford a ticket to Cannes, don’t worry, the Soho International Film Festival starts this weekend.  Now in its fifth year, the festival is a small but growing presence on the city …Read more

Jim Jarmusch’s new revisionist vampire film, “Only Lovers Left Alive,” opens with a beautiful series of shots that reveal the whole film.  Spinning stars fill the screen, then a spinning record, then the stars Swinton and Hiddleston, laying stone sti …Read more

Kenji Mizoguchi is a director’s director long admired by other filmmakers for his formal mastery over a long career, and is considered, along with Ozu and Kurosawa, to be among the holy trinity of Japanese directors.  Yet his name is growing increasi …Read more

Brutal, powerful, and compassionate, “Starred Up,” directed by David Mackenzie and starring Jack O’Connell takes its place amongst the best prison films of all time.  O’Connell plays Eric Love, and the film opens with him being inducted into a new pr …Read more

An affecting portrait of a landscape in decay, “Beneath the Harvest Sky” is a promising debut from writer/director team Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly. The pair are former documentarians and that past shows in the observational rigor brought to the …Read more

Few films open with a scene detailing the color choice of a new tractor and end with four naked, mature men getting in bed together but “The King of Escape” is in a category of its own.  The film, originally released in 2009 in France, is receiving i …Read more

“Bad Words,” the directing debut of “Arrested Development” star Jason Bateman, walks a familiar tightrope: trying to make a protagonist who is an unapologetic asshole palatable to the audience.  The movie, about a middle-aged man who exploits a looph …Read more

This spring, anybody wanting to see the works of auteur filmmakers has been well served by the city’s repertory houses –we’ve got Scorsese and Walsh playing now at BAM, Hitchcock and Truffaut at Film Forum, a Jim Jarmusch retrospective coming up at L …Read more

Over the next two months, Film Forum is showing the complete films of both Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut.  In honor of this pairing, we will preview the Hitchcock films using insights from the directors’ own conversations in Hitchcock/Truffa …Read more