We “Create art out of a great compassion and need to help” [Ingmar Bergman, Persona]. A film has the opportunity to be a visual poem, with shots cut and placed so carefully that a sequence of vision and sound…

Though Luca Guadagnino has of late become one of the cinema’s premier aesthetes, his demeanor when speaking about his work resembles a producer rather than a director of his renown. In interviews, he is just as inclined to spend ample…

The “third golden age,” the “high art era” of TV, or, simply, the age of “art television.” These are some of the definitions that recur in the debate about the boom in quality of US television dramas, which, since the…

Inside a maximum-security prison, DR. CRISTOFF LAKE walks down a cream-colored corridor. In his right hand, he carries his coffee thermos, and in his left hand he holds a few thin manila folders. He is very well put together; his …

In Jean Cocteau’s 1950 masterpiece, Orpheé, Heurtebise (François Périer) leads Orpheus (Jean Marais) into the Underworld to save Eurydice (Marie Déa), Orpheus’ wife.  To do so, Heurtebise instructs Orpheus to put on a pair of gloves so that he…