Kevin Lally on Film

Polish Master Andrzej Wajda, Five Years Before Solidarity’s Triumph

I’m eternally grateful that early in my Film Journal career, thanks to the late, great publicist Renee Furst, I got to sit down with legends of the international film world like Alain Resnais and Andrzej Wajda. This fall 1984 interview with arguably Poland’s most acclaimed director is especially compelling to revisit, since Wajda had been forced to…

gkevinlally

May 8, 2023

Filmmakers, Wajda, Andrzej

Paul Schrader Encounters a Japanese Icon in ‘Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters’

Paul Schrader made an auspicious directing debut 45 years ago with Blue Collar, a hard-hitting drama about three struggling Michigan auto workers who turn to crime. Already celebrated as the screenwriter of the landmark Taxi Driver, Schrader continued to pursue parallel tracks as writer-director (Hardcore, American Gigolo, Cat People, The Comfort of Strangers, Light Sleeper, Affliction, Auto…

gkevinlally

April 22, 2023

Filmmakers, Schrader, Paul

Thirty-five Years Ago, Costa-Gavras Made a Film About White Supremacists in America

The great Greek-French filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras turned 90 on February 12, 2023. Best known for his Oscar-winning 1969 classic Z, the director seldom made a film that wasn’t fueled by political urgency. That certainly applies to the movie that was the subject of our 1988 conversation, Betrayed. His third English-language film, it stars Debra Winger as an…

gkevinlally

March 26, 2023

Costa-Gavras, Constantin, Filmmakers

Ben Affleck’s ‘Air’ Chronicles Nike’s Groundbreaking Pursuit of Michael Jordan

With the exception of his 2016 misstep Live by Night, actor and sometime tabloid target Ben Affleck has an enviable track record as a director. Gone Baby Gone, his adaptation of a Dennis Lehane crime tale, was an auspicious debut; his follow-up, The Town, was equally gritty and gripping, and Argo won the Oscar for best picture. (And let’s…

gkevinlally

March 24, 2023

Film Appreciation

Dino Risi’s Masterpiece ‘Una Vita Difficile’ Finally Gets Its Closeup

The best film of 2023 (so far) was made in 1961. Let me explain. Dino Risi’s Una Vita Difficile (A Difficult Life) was a critical and popular success in its native Italy, but for some unknown reason was never released in the United States until February 2023—despite the strong track record of contemporaneous Italian imports like La Dolce…

gkevinlally

March 21, 2023

Film Appreciation

Revisiting ‘Looper,’ ‘Poker Face’ and ‘Knives Out’ Creator Rian Johnson’s Breakthrough Feature

I’ve just finished the penultimate episode of my favorite new streaming series, “Poker Face,” a conscious throwback to “Columbo” in which each episode begins with a murder and the fun is in watching Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale, a human “bullshit detector” on the run from mobsters, solve the crime. The creator of the show is…

gkevinlally

March 2, 2023

Filmmakers, Johnson, Rian