Sun-dappled waves and swirling ocean depths reflect psychological turmoil in these moodily atmospheric tales of seaside suspense set against rugged shorelines and restless waters. In the interplay between location and plot, films like OUT OF THE FOG and THE GHOST WRITER exploit the sense of isola...

With its cynical worldview and sympathy for doomed outsiders, it’s no wonder that film noir ran afoul of the Hollywood blacklist. Beginning in the 1940s, many left-leaning filmmakers found in noir the perfect vehicle for challenging the dream factory’s sunny view of American society. Campaigns li...

Kathryn Bigelow’s early films are bracing fusions of kinetic genre thrills and potent social critique, probing cultural anxieties and questions of identity with style and intelligence to burn. THE LOVELESS, her assured directorial debut, is a reinvention of the road movie, blending existential de...

Always bold, subversive, and razor-sharp, auteur and cultural icon Spike Lee sees the complexities of life in America with a clarity like no other. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, he sits down with Sheril Antonio, his colleague at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, to disc...

Among the greatest filmmakers working today, Chinese master Jia Zhangke is the foremost cinematic chronicler of the vast changes that have transformed his country over the last half century in its transition from communism to a globalized, increasingly market-based society. Beginning his career a...

Throughout her multifaceted career, Joan Chen has continually proven herself a master of her craft, effortlessly spanning cultures and bridging worlds. First discovered in her teens in China during the seventies, she broke through to international audiences with her performance in Bernardo Bertol...

Writer, satirist, “pornographer,” surrealist, and provocateur, Terry Southern was one of the great literary minds of his time. As a screenwriter, he brought his irreverent, gonzo sensibility to some of the defining counterculture films of the 1960s. Invited by Stanley Kubrick to assist on the scr...

Whether they’re neonoir thrillers or gripping historical dramas, the films of Michael Mann pulsate with visual adrenaline. Through a propulsive fusion of image, sound, and movement, he creates worlds that feel both heightened and intimately real, with light- and color-saturated frames, unforgetta...