Category: Filmmakers
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Back to ‘The Village’ with M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan is getting some of the best reviews of his career with his new thriller, Trap. The writer-director broke through in a big way in 1999 with his third feature, the Oscar-nominated smash The Sixth Sense. Since then, he’s had hits and notorious flops, but he’s kept generating original stories with often startling twists. Twenty…
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Edoardo Ponti Celebrates the First NYC Retrospective Devoted to His Legendary Mother, Sophia Loren
It’s shocking but apparently true: Film at Lincoln Center is currently presenting the first-ever New York City retrospective of one of the greatest movie stars in history, Sophia Loren. Over the course of her seven-decade career, the native of Naples enjoyed success in both Italy and Hollywood, in both comedies and dramas, co-starring with the…
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Edoardo de Angelis’s ‘Comandante’ Tells an Epic Tale of WWII Humanism
Film at Lincoln Center’s 24th annual “Open Roads” series of new Italian films launched in spectacular fashion with Comandante/The War Machine, the incredible true story of an Italian submarine crew during the early years of World War II. What makes the epic stand out is its humanism: After the Cappellini sinks the ostensibly neutral Belgian freighter Kabalo, Italian captain…
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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…
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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…
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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…
Kevin Lally on Film 