Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu concerns itself with such knowledge. Nosferatu. A word for the vampire. English permits “vampire movies” — but a “nosferatu movie?” Say “vampire” and your lips must grin. The other word looks like sucking lemons. Perfect. There is nothing pleasant about Herzog...
To watch F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (1922) is to seethe vampire movie before it had really seen itself. Here is the story of Dracula before it was buried alive in clichés, jokes, TV skits, cartoons and more than 30 other films. The film is in awe of its material. It seems to...
BakerProduced by Sean Baker, Alex Coco, Samantha Quan —“The Brutalist” • A24“Challengers” • Amazon MGM Studios“Conclave” • Focus Features“Dune: Part Two” • Warner Bros Pictures“I Saw the TV Glow” • A24“Nickel Boys” • Orion/Amazon MGM Studios“Nosferatu” • [...
The man is middle-aged, impeccably dressed, perfectly groomed, obviously respectable. He has just barely caught his train. A young woman comes running down the station platform, also trying to catch the train. The man’s face reflects intense annoyance; he whispers something to the conductor, ...
One of Hitchcock’s trademarks has been his habit of shooting on location and working the location itself into the plot. In “Strangers on a Train,” the climax comes in an amusement park, so naturally there’s a deadly duel on a merry-go-round. Truffaut is loyal to this tradition; eve...
“The Fall of the House of Usher,” I barely stirred during the film’s 66-minute running time. A tone, an atmosphere, was created that actually worked. As with “Nosferatu,” the film seemed less a fiction than the realization of some phantasmagoric alternative reality. Epstein’s openness...
A review of Murnau’s “Nosferatu” is in my Great Movies Collection. Also included: “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,”“Fitzcarraldo,”“Heart of Glass,”“The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser,” and “Stroszek.”
“Terms of Endearment” feels as much like life as any movie I can think of. At the same time, it’s a triumph of show business, with its high comic style, its flair for bittersweet melodrama and its star turns for the actors. Maybe the best thing about this movie is the way it ...
Having seen “Reversal of Fortune,” the story of Claus von Bulow’s two trials on the charge of attempting to murder his wife, I am no closer than before to a clear idea of who did what, or why. That is the charm of the movie. Something terrible happened to Sunny von Bulow on th...
Murnau’s technical mastery makes all of his films exciting to see. In the vampire movie “Nosferatu,” in the fiendish visions of “Faust,” in the imaginary city of “Sunrise,” he created phantasmagoric visions that seemed to define his characters: They were who they were because of what...