“He’s not always as ambitious as he could be, and he’s better on dishonesty than he is with feelings of warmth . . . He’s a good guy, and he’s definitely an auteur.  Which is not to say that every film is an artistic success.”1                      […]

After more than twenty years in the film industry, Joseph L. Mankiewicz was at the top of his profession in 1950.   He had won two Oscars in March for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and had completed filming All About Eve (1950) which would be released in October and go on […]

Of all the types and genres of film that exist, the rarest of all may be the autumnal masterpiece.  What explains the infrequent sightings of this cinematic marvel?  It is not that filmmakers somehow lose their talent at a particular age, but rather that, the industry being a slave of fashion, they lose the ability […]

Let me begin by getting the boilerplate that appears in every review of a movie by Lars von Trier out of the way: a) Lars von Trier is a provocateur whose films may very well be mere exercises in cynicism; b) Lars von Trier dares to make films about America without ever having visited the […]