Category: Film

The title of Ousmane Sembene’s 1971 Senegalese film means “God of Thunder”—the deity to whom a tribal village prays when the French colonial government commandeers the rice supply. Set during World War II, the film dramatizes the effect of European ideology on African traditions. In Diola and French with subtitles. 103 min.

A tranquil British village is terrorized by a series of violent murders; meanwhile, virginal Rosalind Russell is feeling a strange attraction to the handsome young cockney (Robert Montgomery) who’s just arrived in town toting a mysteriously heavy hatbox. Emlyn Williams’s stage thriller was a classic of the genre; this 1937 MGM adaptation is a little […]

PG • 2 hours

Alan Crosland’s 1926 film earned its place in movie history as the first feature to be presented with a synchronized Vitaphone score. But it’s also a droll and dashing comedy adventure, starring a Flynn-like John Barrymore as the famous lover (here trying to untangle a court plot against his beloved queen). Crosland’s direction is marvelously […]

John Davies’s Irish feature criticizes the media’s treatment of the ongoing violence in Belfast through the story of an English camera crew that arrives to do a TV documentary on a typical Catholic child (1983).

Entire new frontiers in boredom were opened up by this MGM whopper from 1959, produced at the then staggering cost of $15 million (hardly enough to pay for a mid-80s Dudley Moore vehicle). It swept both the Academy Awards and the nation’s box offices, though if you can keep both eyes open through its whole […]

John Steinbeck’s novel of a marine biologist in love with a prostitute, set along the Monterey waterfront of the 1940s. David Ward, who wrote The Sting, adapted and directed, using story elements from Steinbeck’s sequel, Sweet Thursday. With Nick Nolte, Debra Winger, and Audra Lindley; photographed by Sven Nykvist.

2 hours 22 min