Bicycle Thieves takes place at a very specific time under a unique series of social conditions that shape both its narrative and its embrace of the Neorealist message. Though its specificity may precl...

Rather than a picturesque park or square, a festering cesspool resides at the hub of the neighborhood in Drunken Angel, the 1948 release and first major cinematic accomplishment by Japanese master Aki...

Akira Kurosawa’s kidnapping thriller explores the question, “Why can’t people be happier together?”

The Player opens with a crane shot that lasts over seven minutes, all filmed as one long take, much of it improvised, during which each moment sets up the film’s many plotlines and characters. The sho...

In Nashville, Robert Altman takes pieces of country music tesserae and assembles a sprawling mosaic that, grouted by the history and music of the Tennessee capital, reflects and anticipates the presen...

An early scene in The Untouchables sets the stage for how director Brian De Palma establishes a nostalgic idyll, and then shatters it throughout the film. In 1930, just under the El train in Chicago’s...

John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, an adventure about gold prospectors in Mexico, voyages into dark places where greed corrupts men and leaves them overcome by suspicion and paranoia, and...

An urgent and aggressive reflector of American culture’s distrust for its government.

Somewhere in space, a haze of dormant satellites orbits the not-so-blue planet Earth. Beneath the planet’s rusty outer atmosphere stand ancient skyscrapers, and beside them, towers built from cubes of...