Kathryn Bigelow has undoubtedly been one of Hollywood's most significant female players, well known in popular terms for films such as Point Break and Blue Steel, yet relatively unexplored in academia. Soundbites about women and guns and speculation about the role of ex-husband James Cameron (Aliens, Titanic) in her career have often helped obscure rather than elucidate an understanding of her work. This collection explores how Bigelow can be seen to provide a point of intersection to a whole range of issues at the forefront of contemporary film studies and of the...

Michael Haneke is one of the most important directors working in Europe today, with films such as Funny Games (1997), Code Unknown (2000), and Hidden (2005) interrogating modern ethical dilemmas with forensic clarity and merciless insight. Haneke's films frequently implicate both the protagonists and the audience in the making of their misfortunes, yet even in the barren nihilism of The Seventh Continent (1989) and Time of the Wolf (2003) a dark strain of optimism emerges, releasing each from its terrible and inescapable guilt. It is this contingent and...

Over the course of nearly thirty years, Hal Hartley has cultivated a reputation as one of America's most steadfastly independent film directors. From his breakthrough films - The Unbelievable Truth (1989), Trust (1990), and Simple Men (1992) - to his recently completed 'Henry Fool' trilogy, Hartley has honed a rigorous, deadpan, and instantly recognizable film style informed by both European modernism and playful revisions of Classical Hollywood genres. Featuring new essays on this important director and his films, this collection explores Hartley's work from a variety of...

He became a movie star playing The Man With No Name, and today his name is known around the world. Measured by longevity, productivity, and profits, Clint Eastwood is the most successful actor-director-producer in American film history. This book examines the major elements of his career, focusing primarily on his work as a director but also exploring the evolution of his acting style, his long association with screen violence, his interest in jazz, and the political views - sometimes hotly controversial - reflected in his films and public statements. Especially fascinating is the pivotal...

Although best known as an Academy Award winning actor, Sean Penn's directorial works The Indian Runner (1991), The Crossing Guard (1995), The Pledge (2001), and Into the Wild (2007), consist of some of the most interesting and singular films made in the United States over the past twenty years. Each of Penn's directorial films and much of the cinema he has acted in are set in an immediate past in which a "stalled" time and a restricted locale apply narrative constraints. At the same time, these films all feature a sophisticated web of intertextual relations,...

In a controversial and tumultuous filmmaking career that spanned nearly fifty years, Robert Altman mocked, subverted, or otherwise refashioned Hollywood narrative and genre conventions. Altman's idiosyncratic vision and propensity for formal experimentation resulted in an uneven body of work: some rank failures and intriguing near-misses, as well as a number of great films that are among the most influential works of New American Cinema. While Altman always professed to have nothing authoritative to say about the state of contemporary society, this volume surveys all of his major films in...

This volume considers for the first time in a single collection this acclaimed, award-winning director's entire oeuvre, addressing and analysing themes such as identity, family, and masculinity, supported by in-depth coverage of the generic and aesthetic aspects of DiCillo's distinctive and influential film style. Through detailed chapters on each of DiCillo's feature films, presented here is a candid look behind-the-scenes of both the American independent film industry - from the No Wave movement of the 1980s, through the Indie boom of the 1990s, to the contemporary milieu - and the...

A pioneer of the French New Wave, Louis Malle went on to an acclaimed transatlantic career. This collection of essays reassesses his eclectic and subversive oeuvre to redress the critical neglect it has suffered. The volume features contributions from playwright John Guare and filmmakers Volker Schloendorff and Wes Anderson.

A pioneer of the French New Wave, Louis Malle went on to an acclaimed transatlantic career. This collection of essays reassesses his eclectic and subversive oeuvre to redress the critical neglect it has suffered. The volume features contributions from playwright John Guare and filmmakers Volker Schloendorff and Wes Anderson.

In this second edition of The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Rob Stone shows how Linklater's latest films have redefined our understanding of his work, offering critical analysis of films including Before Midnight (2013) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), as well as new interviews with Linklater and a chapter on Boyhood (2014).