Author Spotlight

Dave Kehr

Dave Kehr is a critic and curator based in New York City. His books include When Movies Mattered and Movies That Mattered, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

5 Results
Risky Business: Coming of Age in Reagan’s America

Unlike the string of early-1980s sex comedies that it superficially resembles, Paul Brickman’s debut feature fuses fierce social satire and dark, dreamy eroticism with unexpectedly rich and ambiguous results.

By Dave Kehr

Rushmore
The title of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore refers to the ivy-covered prep school attended by the film’s central character, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman). Max, with his bushy eyebrows and imposing glasses, loves his school beyond reason and is Rushmor…

By Dave Kehr

Indiscretion of an American Wife &Terminal Station
Vittorio De Sica was one of the world’s most celebrated filmmakers when, in 1952, David O. Selznick commissioned Terminal Station (Stazione Termini, 1954) from him and his screenwriting partner, Cesare Zavattini. The film would be a gallant experim…

By Dave Kehr

Loves of a Blonde

When Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde had its American premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1966, it was an immediate sensation. Nothing quite as fresh and apparently spontaneous had appeared on the scene since François Truffaut’s The 400 B

By Dave Kehr

Black Narcissus
When Black Narcissus opened in England in 1947, Great Britain was barely emerging from the agony and exhaustion of World War II. Nothing could be further from gray, hungry postwar London than the India imagined by director Michael Powell and screenwr…

By Dave Kehr