Film noir is not a genre, but a style—a cinematic mood defined by cynicism, moral ambiguity, and a distinct visual…
Browsing: Film Guides
When Orson Welles, a 25-year-old wunderkind of radio and theatre, was given unprecedented creative control by RKO Pictures, he didn’t…
Mulholland Drive (2001) is not a movie you watch; it is a crime scene you inhabit. Widely hailed as the…
In 1980, the New Hollywood era—a decade-plus of unprecedented creative freedom for a new generation of visionary directors—came to a…
Two years after Jaws taught Hollywood how to create a summer blockbuster, a young filmmaker named George Lucas took that…
In the summer of 1975, a 28-year-old director named Steven Spielberg did more than just make audiences afraid to go…
Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) redefined what a Western could be. Often called the definitive ‘anti-Western,’ the film turned the mythology of the frontier inside out, exposing the human cost of ambition and greed
Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (1970) stands as one of Hollywood’s boldest revisionist Westerns — a film that transformed how America viewed its past. This analysis explores how Penn’s vision shattered the myths of the frontier and reflected the turmoil of the Vietnam era.
In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War and a period of profound social upheaval in America, director Sam…
For decades, the American Western was the bedrock of Hollywood’s national mythology. It was a genre of moral certainty, a…