Kazuo Hara’s The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987) is a documentary like few others. Watching Kenzo Okuzaki cut a swath through his old squad mates in search of the truth is unsettling, especially as the process intensifies.

Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932) is a frothy, bubbly, and sumptuous perennial delight. With his famed “Lubitsch touch”, director Ernst Lubitsch brought a winking and earthy European sensibility to all his films.

It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty-five years since Todd Solondz blessed us with the hero we didn’t know we needed in Dawn Wiener as we meet her in Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995). Simply put, this changed what I thought was possible with movies abo...

Watching Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) in the theater was an ineffably special experience. The film itself is an astounding accomplishment, following the life of not just a boy, but also that of his mother, father, and sister. Time unfolds before us.

There have been very few films that blindsided me the way that Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1989) did. I was just beginning to grasp how much there was out there to explore that fell outside the realm of multiplexes and the mainstream.

When Martha Coolidge was brought in to direct Valley Girl (1983), she knew there were some key elements she needed to bring to the film. Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford had written a teen comedy romp in about ten days to capitalize on the valley girl fa...

There’s a strange alchemy at work in Rolling Thunder (Flynn, 1977). We start with two subgenres that really flourished in the seventies – the Vietnam homecoming and the revenge mission. William Devane turns up that tension by giving as tightly controll...

What a treat it is to come back again and again to Raising Arizona (Coen, 1987). I have seen the film at least 20 times, and I laugh just as hard at each viewing. The Coen Brothers (Joel as director, along with Ethan as co-writer) have crafted a surrea...

We are keeping the film noir train rolling this month, literally, with The Narrow Margin (Fleischer, 1952). This is one of my all time favorites, without a doubt. If they ever made a noir Mount Rushmore, this should be on it.

We decided to continue our annual tradition of highlighting our favorite films noir during the month of May, even though this year’s Noir City Austin film festival is sadly postponed. I chose my very first film noir, Laura (Preminger, 1944),