Clayton Dillard

Like Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, which creates a damning critique of media circuses that would allow a man to die if it means increasing readership, The Tarnished Angels understands the innate human desire to look at beauty or terror as the potentially catastrophic fuel of public interest.

Director Mike Nichols exploits rather than interrogates Ben’s anxieties, so that his ennui is reducible to his accomplishments, which keep getting repeated by the adults as badges of vicarious honor. Nichols also plays Ben’s socially awkward tics for laughs, whether Ben’s literally whimpering in Mrs. Robinson’s presence or in a cold sweat as he arranges what appears to be his first sexual encounter.

Much like Body Heat, which valorized noirish archetypes instead of examining their original social contexts, Breathless simply has a hard-on for Hollywood lore, as convertibles, rockabilly, and monochromatic lighting are utilized to enshrine dominant legacies rather than invert or, at least, probe them.

In the end, Suburbia’s greatest strength lies in its assertion of youth as a political state of mind.

While Roger Ebert’s screenplay contains overt jabs at Hollywood’s culture of exploitation, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls cannot be called anything but sincere regarding its penchant for buxom female anatomy.

The Other Side of Hope fulfills the vague sense of its aspirational title as a film limited in scope and led only by the guidance of its maker's skeptical positivity.

Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1992 film resonates primarily for its lacerating comedic writing and pacing.

Even if the narrative threads aren’t as tightly focused on exploring a complex theme as one might hope, The Body Snatcher nevertheless manages to still send chills, and predominately through Wise’s fleet direction and Karloff’s unflinching embodiment of a real-world monster.

This is a work of art that's as much a cinematic probe, and a challenge to mythologizing past eras, as it is an ancestral history lesson.

Tati biographer David Bellos called 1953’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday “Tati’s most perfect film,” and in many ways, it’s difficult to disagree with this sentiment in terms of tone and form.

Dr. Strangelove is unique as an American studio film in that nearly every scene addresses its alignment of military action with sexual impotence and bodily excretion. It’s possibly the filthiest studio comedy ever made, even though there isn’t a single gross-out gag, curse word, or graphic image in its entire running time.