Nicolas Rapold

The sun, burning a hole in the sky, recurs in the opening montages of Donald Cammell's shape-shifting films. As shorthand for an ­everyday portal to the infinite, they're fitting overtures for a director who staged explosions of identity and experience that thrillingly get out of hand. The rocker/gangster culture clash......

The 2009 Oscars "In Memoriam" tribute yielded a wonderful alternate-universe moment: In the obit roll call naming Charlton Heston and Cyd Charisse, there — on national television! — was "Manny Farber, critic." Rounding out the apparent hallucination, his likeness appeared alongside a cruddy-fabulous copy of Movies, the 1974 paperback reissue......

Jacques Tati’s charming second full-length film, M. Hulot’s Holiday was the first to feature his lanky, mild-mannered, pipe-clutching Monsieur Hulot — a comic creation on par with Chaplin’s Little Tramp and Keaton’s deadpan hero. This literally leisurely comedy, set at a humble seaside resort, does not center only on the......

With the molded-rubber face of Savalas, the basso profundo of Stallone, and the name of an underdog gas alternative, Vin Diesel’s already-dubious ripped-tough-guy star has dimmed enough to warrant a return to the car-chase series that made him — and money. In the latest, notably slack Fast & Furious (No......

Filipino director Brillante Mendoza once worked in glossy advertising, but in his films, he dives headlong into the unglam fracas of poor, bustling Manila families. Since shooting his first feature, Masseur, in 2005 at age 45, the already prolific Mendoza has attacked sympathetic immersion from different angles, ranging from careening......

A feral boy is captured and educated: He gets a scrubbed face, clothes, table manners, language and finally a reason to rebel. Taking The 400 Blows to another level, François Truffaut’s 1970 feature The Wild Child considers a child who is literally wild, with the filmmaker himself starring as an......