On the first day at his new school, Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) instantly falls for Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), the gorgeous girl of his dreams. The only problem is that Bianca is forbidden to date until her ill-tempered, completely undatable older sister Kat (Julia Stiles) goes out, too. In an attempt to solve his problem, Cameron singles… Read more »
A scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners, The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu) follows a group of wealthy friends, spouses, and lovers — and their servants — as they spend a weekend at a country château. When the tensions among them lay bare some ugly truths, tragedy… Read more »
A bright and charismatic sociopath making his way in mid-1950s NYC through menial work and petty scams, Tom Ripley is hired through a case of mistaken identity by a shipping magnate to bring back his loafing son, Dickie (Jude Law), from a too-long extended Italian vacation with his girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Tom soon finds… Read more »
A corpse drifts to the bottom of a river in The Night of the Hunter Chris Forrester considers the powerful legacy of 1955’s The Night of the Hunter, a nightmare-fueled noir with far-reaching iconography and themes. There are films you can almost see without seeing. Famous images, lines of dialogue, and plot points from films… Read more »
The Virgin Suicides Noni Ford examines how both the Jeffrey Eugenides novel The Virgin Suicides and Sofia Coppola’s adaptation portray the disconnect between the male narrators and the sisters at the center of the story. “We saw the light in her eyes we have been looking for ever since.”— The narrators, The Virgin Suicides by… Read more »
Opening title from the TV version of Duel, broadcast as part of ABC’s TV Movie of the Weekend series Guest writer Caleb Allison compares the original TV and theatrical versions of Steven Spielberg’s masterful debut feature film. The April 1971 edition of Playboy featured a story by screenwriter, novelist, and regular Playboy fiction author Richard… Read more »