The Essentials
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The Playlist8 commentslike3tweet14
The Essentials: 5 Great Ernst Lubitsch Films
Sadly, the name Ernst Lubitsch isn't one that's batted around much by the hip young gunslingers of the movie world. Given that he passed away in the 1940s, there are many whose grandparents were barely out of short trousers the last time a Lubitsch picture was in theaters, and only a few filmmakers ...
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The Playlist9 commentslike5tweet12
The Essentials: 5 Great Max Von Sydow Performances
The most notable thing about Max von Sydow is that he has played them all. Strong heroes, existential figures, formidable villains—there are few actors in the history of film with the versatility of the Swedish star. With a career that began all the way back in the 1950s, von Sydow has co...
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The Playlist13 commentslike1tweet18
Retrospective: The Films Of Ang Lee
For a filmmaker who’s tackled a wide range of genres, from minor-key Chinese-language comedies to epic kung-fu action, from nuanced literary Americana to iconic CGI-driven superheroics, it’s actually relatively easy to spot an Ang Lee film if you know what you're looking for. Superficially, the Taiw...
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The Playlist6 commentslike11tweet19
Retrospective: The Films Of Alfred Hitchcock Pt. 2 (1940-1976, The Hollywood Years)
In the late 1930s, with films like "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes" having proven global hits, the New York Times wrote: "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not. Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge and Alfred Hitchcock, the gr...
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The Playlist4 commentslike3tweet31
The Essentials: 5 Great Louis Malle Films On The Director's 80th Birthday
Driven by a fierce intellectual curiosity that would find the filmmaker hungrily roving from subject to subject, both in the narrative sense and the journalistic one (he shot around ten documentaries in his career), French filmmaker Louis Malle, who was born eighty years ago today, on October 30th, ...
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The Playlist6 commentslike102tweet70
The Essentials:The Works Of Harris Savides
As you might have already heard, today brings the awfully sad news that Harris Savides, one of the great working American cinematographers, has passed away at the age of 55. Savides was a relatively late-starter in features (his first stint as DoP was Phil Joanou's "Heaven's Prisoners" in 1996), but...
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The Playlist12 commentslike12tweet14
The Essentials: The 5 Best Christopher Walken Performances
It's easy to caricature Christopher Walken. One of the most iconic character actors of his generation, he's also got one of the most imitated voices around (everyone has a Walken impression, even if it's as bad as this writer's...), and has become an indelible part of pop culture, thanks to everythi...
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The Playlist24 commentslike15tweet11
The Essentials: 5 Great Films Based On Stephen King Novels
Stephen King is, all of a sudden, a hot property again. One of the major forces in popular literature of the past forty-odd years, it's been a few years since the last major King adaptation, but a wealth of projects from the director are on their way in the next few years.
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The Playlist9 commentslike2tweet23
The Essentials: The 5 Best Tony Scott Films
Something we've come to appreciate since the terrible news of the passing of director Tony Scott came in this morning, is that there's an argument to be made that almost any one of his films saw him at the top of his game. From debut feature "The Hunger," one of the first movies of the MTV generatio...
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The Playlist15 commentslike9tweet47
30 Essential Films Missing From The Sight & Sound Top 100
The trouble with a list is that not everyone is going to agree. What's often offered as a personal selection of favorites can often be taken by a reader as a personal affront, a sign of snobbery or boorishness, even if a list is a compilation from multiple contributors. And as the fuss over the Sigh...
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