-
Remembering Seven-Time Oscar Nominee Norman Jewison
Seven-time Oscar nominee Norman Jewison died on January 20 at the age of 97. His range was remarkable, from romantic comedies to socially conscious dramas, splashy musicals to classy caper films. Dramas like The Cincinnati Kid and In the Heat of the Night have only gotten better with age, and his most beloved film, Moonstruck, has become a modern…
-
New York and the Movies—An Enduring Combination
In the pantheon of movie greats, there’s one star that has outlasted all others, lending spectacular support to everyone from Charlie Chaplin and Gene Kelly to Barbra Streisand and Robert De Niro. That star is New York City, the endlessly photogenic locale of countless movies since the silent era. The list of New York-set films…
-
A Film from 1961 Leads My 2023 Ten Best List
I said it back in March, and I’ll say it again: The best film of 2023 was made in 1961. It’s baffling that Dino Risi’s masterly Una Vita Difficile was never released in America until this year, but there you go. (More details below.) That’s not to say there weren’t many exceptional new films this year. My…
-
Revisiting John Woo’s Little Seen Native American Epic, ‘Windtalkers’
The new thriller Silent Night marks action master John Woo’s first American film in 20 years. Seems like a good occasion to look back on my summer 2002 interview with the Hong Kong legend; the subject was, like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a rare, big-scale story about Native Americans. Gentle, modest and courtly, John Woo…
-
New York Film Festival Spotlights Iconic Men—and Their Long-Suffering Partners
It’s probably a coincidence, but a recurring theme has emerged at this year’s New York Film Festival: iconic men and their long-suffering female partners. Three films focus on famous, larger-than-life males, but with equal weight given, story-wise, to the women who put up (or don’t) with their titanic, self-aggrandizing egos. For the first half of…
-
Remembering Terence Davies, Film Poet of the Ordinary
The acclaimed British writer-director Terence Davies died today, October 7, at the age of 77, after a short illness. I met the soft-spoken but defiantly idiosyncratic artist in 1993, to discuss one of his most lauded films, The Long Day Closes. Davies went on to make seven more features: The Neon Bible, based on the novel by…
-
Agnieszka Holland’s Masterly ‘Green Border’ Is a Devastating Portrait of Poland’s Refugee Crisis
Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border is more than a movie—it’s a soul-shaking experience. It may be the most important and eye-opening film playing at the 61st New York Film Festival—in fact, I’d call it one of the most important films of this decade. Holland, the veteran Polish director of Europa Europa, Washington Square and other fine films, was spurred by the…
-
The 61st New York Film Festival Is a Robust Showcase of Award Contenders
Every September I contract a severe case of Fear Of Missing Out, as word filters in from the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Fortunately, my hometown New York Film Festival nabs many of the buzzy titles from those fests, so my FOMO is short-lived. The 2023 NYFF would have been a starry one if…
-
My Encounters with Billy Wilder, Part 2
For my second interview session with Billy Wilder on March 4, 1994, at his office in Beverly Hills, the legendary writer-director allowed me 45 minutes—and served as my personal countdown clock. In our wide-ranging conversation, we talked about his relatives in Vienna, his early days in Hollywood, his reasons for becoming a director, his high…
-
My First Encounter with Billy Wilder
It’s now 117 years since the birth of Billy Wilder on June 22, 1906. I had the good fortune to interview the great writer-director of the classics Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, The Apartment and so many others in his office in Beverly Hills on September 17, 1993, the first of six encounters (two in…