‘Shoah’ director criticized ‘Schindler’s List’ for its portrayal of the Holocaust

Many of Spielberg's films were inspired by childhood experiences

Steven Spielberg was inspired to make “Saving Private Ryan” after seeing the toll war took on his father’s generation. Similarly, he felt called to direct “Schindler’s List” by the Holocaust survivors he met when he was only three years old.

Spielberg wrote ‘Poltergeist,’ and some say he directed it, too

Although the horror classic doesn’t credit Spielberg as a director, several people from the cast and crew suggested he was in charge of the film. The film’s credited director, Tobe Hooper, says Spielberg was merely brought on as a second director—which Spielberg has repeatedly confirmed.

'Jaws' creators regret making sharks the monsters

Both Peter Benchley, the author of the original 1974 novel, and Steven Spielberg, the director of the blockbuster film based on it, acknowledge that the film's popularity has led to the stigmatization of the mostly harmless creatures.

What is 'Spielberg Face'?

Spielberg’s career is filled with a consistent technique: zooming in on a significant character’s face as they process some essential element of the story. One of the most famous is from “Jaws,” when Brody first witnesses the shark.

A VR tour of Auschwitz narrated by three Holocaust survivors

Receive a tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum through this nearly 10-minute long virtual reality video. Get a 360° view of different sections of the former concentration and extermination camp while hearing the reminiscences of three survivors and learning more about the atrocities committed there over the course of five years.

Liza Minnelli often disagrees with melancholic portrayals of her mother

When the Oscar-winning film "Judy" came out in 2019, Minnelli made a point to distance herself from the film and state that she had no plans to watch it. The actress has stated she dislikes how the media tends to pity her mother. Instead, she makes a point of talking about the happy memories and support that Garland gave her.

A deep dive into Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' adaptation

The "Oppenheimer" director's take on Homer's epic might be the most anticipated movie of the summer. Dockterman's profile of Nolan explores how he's become a Hollywood rarity: a director who balances box-office numbers and critical acclaim.

How 'based on a true story' is that film? A scene-by-scene review

Films based on history may diverge from reality or try to replicate it exactly, though this is difficult for a viewer to evaluate. This tool takes dozens of popular films based on a "true story" and ranks each scene by its authenticity compared to known historical accounts. See reviews for "Hacksaw Ridge," "The Wolf of Wall Street," and more.

Why one theater critic believed Chalamet was wrong about opera

Actor Timothée Chalamet's comments that "no one cares" about ballet and opera led to a number of responses from people in the theater world, including critic Marianka Swain, who argued that Chalamet's statement was a predictable yet tone-deaf Hollywood evaluation of art forms that exist outside of the celebrity-centered industry.

Sartre staged his first play in a POW camp

While imprisoned by the Nazis, the French writer was given permission to write and produce a Christmas show for 15,000 of his fellow POWs. He took the opportunity to produce "Bariona, or the Son of Thunder," a Nativity play that subtly criticized his captors without arousing their suspicions.

The FBI was thrilled with 'The Silence of the Lambs' and its portrayal of the agency

The film's ultimate purpose was to terrify, but the FBI made it clear that they appreciated the accurate, professional portrayals of its agents. "It never hurts to see the organization we all care about and know to be good well-depicted on the big screen," special agent Walter B. Stowe, Jr., wrote in a letter to director Jonathan Demme.

The Holocaust was the systematic, state‑sponsored genocide of 6 million European Jews

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators implemented the “Final Solution”: a state-engineered campaign of antisemitic persecution and mass murder. By the end, two-thirds of Europe’s Jews—approximately 6 million individuals—had been exterminated through ghettos, mass shootings, and extermination camps.

Legendary director Brian De Palma hated his first viewing of 'Star Wars'

The "Carrie" and "Mission: Impossible" director was invited by his friend George Lucas to watch an early cut of the first "Star Wars," a draft that lacked many of the special effects that would be added later. De Palma was highly critical, telling Lucas that "The Force" was an awful name for the spiritual power Luke Skywalker eventually comes to embrace.

Japanese horror is often more psychological than its Western counterpart

One of the country’s most famous directors is Masaki Kobayashi, who won a Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival. Unlike his Western peers, Kobayashi’s films avoid jump scares or gratuitous gore, opting instead for slow-burning psychological explorations that are just as terrifying.

Critics often use the word ‘Shakespearean’ to describe a dramatic story

Calling something “Shakespearean” often denotes a high-quality work of art or a story that recalls one of the Bard’s plays.

'A Complete Unknown' misrepresented some aspects of Dylan's life

Dylan scholar and Princeton professor Sean Wilentz said the 2024 Dylan biopic had several inaccuracies. According to Wilentz, “The facts are all true … but none of it happened the way that the film depicts it.”

Listen to how gaps in schizophrenia care helped to lead to a murder

Michael Laudor attended Yale, succumbed to schizophrenia, and killed his pregnant fiancée. The podcast, which includes a long but moving interview with Laudor's friend Jonathan Rosen, uses the tragedy to frame how America's approach to severe mental illness has fallen short.

The Cannes Film Festival was created as a response to fascism

Initially called the International Film Festival, Cannes was created as an alternative to the Venice Film Festival, which French diplomat Philippe Erlanger believed had been politicized by the influence of Hitler and Mussolini.

Marlon Brando sent Apache and Yaqui actor and activist Sacheen Littlefeather to reject his Oscar

Each year at the Academy Awards, winners of the highest achievements in film give speeches expressing their gratitude, while also venturing into politics, humor, and emotion. Some speeches are met with boos, including Littlefeather's message from Brando refusing the award in protest of Hollywood’s treatment and portrayal of Native Americans in film. Others have remained memorable for their brevity, like Joe Pesci's six-word acceptance.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Dorothea Lange's photos of US concentration camps were censored

Lange, who took some of the most iconic photos of the 20th century, was hired by the United States government in 1942 to document the "relocation" of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps. When military commanders saw her work, however, they censored it, even suggesting some of the images should be "Impounded."

The director of 'The Big Short' is still angry about 2008

Adam McKay adapted Michael Lewis's book "The Big Short" into a hit film about how the 2008 housing market crash began. Now, many years later, the two reflect on the film and the events that brought it about.

'Dr. Strangelove' is widely considered the best satirical film

Stanley Kubrick’s satire about nuclear war came just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis and spoke to Americans still coming to terms with the possibility of nuclear annihilation. In 1989, the Library of Congress included it among the first 25 films preserved in the National Film Registry, a repository for the greatest achievements in cinema.

For many Jewish people, Hanukkah represents the resilience of their community

Today, many Jews interpret Hanukkah in the context of several centuries of history, including the Holocaust. Alan Avery-Peck’s essay explores how the holiday's meaning has evolved according to each generation's struggles.

A Hitchcock film has been adapted for a new demographic: smartphone users

Hitchcock's "The Lodger," a silent film from 1927, has been adapted for Tattle TV, a video app featuring "vertical microdramas" aimed at smartphone users looking for bite-sized stories.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

‘Oz’ was cable’s first hour-long drama

When the dark prison story debuted in 1997, it was HBO’s only drama and followed a principle that would come to define the network’s shows for decades: “‘I don’t care if they’re likable as long as they’re interesting,’” show creator Tom Fontana told Vice. “That was my mantra.”

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Doctors differentiate between a phobia and fear by asking patients whether their fear interferes with their day-to-day activities.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.