James C. Taylor

The year 2008 marked the 40th anniversary of High School, Frederick Wiseman’s simple 75-minute documentary about a large public high school in Philadelphia. Hailed at the time as a landmark of the emerging American “direct cinema,” or “cinéma verité,” High School has retained its iconic status: In 1989, it became......

One can measure the success of Frederick Wiseman’s landmark documentary Hospital by the two Emmys it won, its inclusion in the Library of Congress, or that Pauline Kael wrote a full review of Wiseman’s film in The New Yorker despite the fact that it was only shown on PBS. The......

As the American middle class continues to shrink, so too does the American middlebrow film. It’s hard to remember, but there used to be modestly budgeted studio movies about middle-class people who live in the real world of American life. This summer, a major studio released just one of these......

With feature films directed by the 2005 and 2006 Oscar winners for Best Live Action Short — Martin McDonough (In Bruges) and Ari Sandel (Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show), respectively — in theaters now, Hollywood execs may pay closer-than-usual attention to shorts this Academy Awards season. If they do,......

That famous softie Stanley Kubrick once gushed that Krzysztof Kies-lowski’s films “have the very real ability to dramatize their ideas .?.?. with such dazzling skill, you don’t realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart.” Kubrick was describing The Decalogue (1989), the Polish filmmaker’s 10-part masterpiece, but......