The Story of ‘Saboteur’, Hitchcock’s First Truly American Film
When Alfred Hitchcock came to the United States at the end of the 1930s, having been making films in England for twenty years, it took…
Cinematography
Beware the Beast Man, For He Is the Devil’s Pawn: Franklin J. Schaffner’s ‘Planet of the Apes’
Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah,…
‘Blow-Up’: The Importance and Influence of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Stylish, Thought-Provoking Mystery
In 1966, the Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni, already famous as one of the most prominent European auteurs of his time, reached a far wider audience…
Downwards Is the Only Way Forwards: Welcome to David Fincher’s ‘The Game’
Twenty-one years on, David Fincher’s The Game (1997) has come to be seen as a prescient, schadenfreude look at the gulf between us and the…
‘Horror Implied, as Opposed to Explained… That’s Michael Mann’s Strength (Will)’—‘Manhunter’
In 1986, Michael Mann’s Manhunter elevated schlock-horror to a thoughtful, stylised, forensically psychological level, introducing the concept of a serial killer to a wider base,…
‘No Country for Old Men’: The Coen Brothers and Cormac McCarthy’s Ruthless Examination of Life
That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls,…
‘Punch-Drunk Love’: The Hilarity of Anxiety and Blossoming Love in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘art house Adam Sandler film’
According to Paul Thomas Anderson, the self-taught San Fernando valley wiz-kid now entering the second half of his storied career, love is what happens when…
Rats In the Attic: William Friedkin’s ‘The Exorcist’
Forty-five years after its powerful debut, and with all the attendant publicity, analysis and second-hand knowledge, from satire to theological debate that has existed around…
Duct Soup: The Daffy, Dystopian Design Nightmare of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’
Brazil is the demented, surreal flip-side of George Orwell’s dystopian warning—1984 1/2 was director Terry Gilliam’s originally mooted title. Yet it is Gilliam’s comic vision that…
‘The New World’: Terrence Malick’s Magic Portrayal of America’s Original Sin
After a much-discussed hiatus that lasted for two decades, Terrence Malick returned to filmmaking with the highly praised anti-war epic called The Thin Red Line,…