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In the brief period during the Depression when the exploits of violent gangsters dominated newspaper headlines and radio broadcasts and became outlaw folk heroes to many Americans, no criminal was as infamous as John Dillinger. He was branded “Public Enemy Number One” by the FBI and his death in 1934, betrayed by a woman and gunned down in the streets by cops laying in wait, romanticized him even…

A high octane, pulse-pounding action thriller driven by style, speed, deviously clever flourishes, and a driving techno-beat, Run Lola Run (Germany, 1998) opens with short, sharp shots of Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), a petty criminal with delusions of adequacy, spinning a tale of an easy job turned into a nightmare during a desperate phone conversation with his red-haired lover Lola (Franka…

The films of French horror fantasist Jean Rollin belong to a genre all their own, horror fantasies the plunge viewers into wild fantasy worlds out of time and place where figures (usually nude women) wander a deserted landscape filled with weirdly predatory beings. The Iron Rose (France, 1973) is a weird haunted graveyard piece of two young would-be lovers on a first who become trapped in…

Sam Raimi has spent so many years navigating big budget studio projects—some of them quite well, to be sure—that you might forget how talented he is balancing humor, horror, and character in small, focused films. Send Help (2026) is a return to classic form, a survival tale turned psychodrama with a wicked streak of dark humor under its satirical take on power and office politics in a world where…

The Nude Vampire (France, 1970), the second film from French horror fantasist Jean Rollin, is a strange work of conspiracy, family rebellion, and innocence imprisoned. It’s both a vampire film and a strange science fiction fantasy of a shadowy old men performing secret experiments. Pierre (Olivier Martin, aka Olivier Rollin) is drawn into the story when he’s entranced by a young woman (Caroline…

Notable shows “Elle” (Prime Video, 7/1), the prequel to “Legally Blonde,” is a coming-of-age story that follows Elle Woods (Lexi Minetree) as a high school student. June Diane Raphael and Tom Everett Scott costar and James Van Der Beek appears in one of his final screen appearances. The family-friendly drama “Little House on the Prairie” (Netflix, 7/9) is a new take on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s…

“I am not the adventurous type,” Delphine (Marie Rivière) confesses early in The Green Ray (France, 1986). That’s an understatement. Newly single—she recently broken up with a longtime boyfriend (she calls him a fiancé, as if in denial)—Delphine is set to spend her summer vacation with her best friend. When she cancels at the last minute, jilted in favor of a new boyfriend, the prospects of…

Wildly ambitious, explosively energetic, and exuberantly feminist, Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Bride! (2026) reinvents and reinvigorates the story of the bride of Frankenstein, barely a footnote in Mary Shelley‘s novel and a mere supporting character in the 1933 film that immortalized the character. Paying tribute to the original The Bride of Frankenstein, it opens with Mary Shelley, driven by the…

King Hu‘s Dragon Inn (Taiwan, 1967), also known as Dragon Gate Inn, pits a group of enigmatic strangers against soldiers sent by a power-hungry Eunuch in the court of the Chinese Emperor to murder the children of a popular government official. They all converge on a the lonely inn of the title, an isolated, wind-scoured building in the middle of the desert near the Dragon Gate military outpost,…

The Only Son (Japan, 1936) is on the tragic end of the spectrum of Yasujiro Ozu‘s cinema, a drama of disappointment in an era of economic hard times, where the only thing worse that professional failure is failing to live up to parental expectations. Disappointment seems inevitable from the quote that opens the film: “Life’s tragedy begins with the bonding of child and parent. Widowed mother…

Yasujiro Ozu‘s There Was a Father (Japan, 1942) is an indisputable masterpiece. Though made while Japan was gripped in the nationalist fervor of World War II and the government demanded messages of national duty in every film, the result is a work of grace and simplicity that feels as timeless now as it was timely then. Chishu Ryu (Ozu’s longtime leading man and cinematic alter-ego) is Shuhei,…

Lancelot du lac (France,1974), Robert Bresson’s Arthurian drama, is anything but romantic. It opens in the midst of battle, presented in a straightforward, matter-of-fact manner that is nonetheless moody and startlingly graphic: limbs are hacked off and blood spurts freely (the Black Knight scene in Monty Python and The Holy Grail is surely a direct parody). Bresson continues his unemotional…

Forget the original clunky, kitschy 1980s sci-fi series. The 21st century Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009), developed for the SyFy cable channel by Ronald D. Moore, is more than a revival. It’s a creative, clever, and compelling rethinking of the show. The drama about the human survivors of an intergalactic massacre on a deep space wagon train search for the mythical plant Earth is reborn with a…

Most Stars Wars fans know about the infamous 1978 TV Christmas special that George Lucas has kept under lock and key since its debut. But do you know about this musical tribute to the original Star Wars from Donny and Marie, the seventies variety show starring Donny and Marie Osmond and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft? It’s the big finale from the third season premiere and it stars Kris…

Notable shows “Lord of the Flies” (Netflix, 5/4), William Golding’s classic dystopian novel of schoolboys gone savage on deserted island, is adapted into a limited series by “His Dark Materials” showrunner Jack Thorne with a cast of newcomers. The limited series “The Other Bennet Sister” (BritBox, 5/6), based on the novel by Janice Hadlow, tells the story of Mary Bennet (Ella Bruccoleri), the…

Brian De Palma borrows liberally from Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rear Window and Vertigo for Body Double (1984), but to dismiss this polarizing film as a Hitchcock pastiche is to miss the point—and the sheer, thrilling cinematic gusto—of his operatic thriller. Fittingly opening on a film within a film, it stars Craig Wasson as struggling young actor Jake Scully. Suffering from crippling claustrophobia…

The Shield (2002-2008) debuted on the FX cable channel early in 2002. Creator Shawn Ryan based the show on the real-life Rampart scandal, a notorious case of a small group of Los Angeles cops who took out drug dealers and took over their business for their own enrichment. Almost immediately it shook up television by pushing the boundaries of violence and sexual content on commercial cable and…