No matter how hard movies like Hackers, Blackhat, and Unfriended may work to convince you otherwise, there’s nothing especially cinematic about using the internet. As immersive and time-consuming as “being online” can be, when you zoom out, it’s mostly just people with bad posture hunched over computer terminals, clicking and …

The title card that opens 1979’s original Mad Max places the action in a very near future, looming just “a few years from now.” George Miller’s cult action-thriller captured the edginess of a world teetering on the brink. The film depicts a not-quite-postapocalyptic Australia, where gangs of high-octane galoots rove …

Midway through Ferrari, the iconic Italian motor-racing impresario sits at a table with his adolescent son, born of his mistress. Enzo Ferrari sketches a design for a 12-cylinder engine, in long, chalky swoops, like a seamstress designing an elegant gown. He explains to his boy that the curved, sweeping angles …

Sometime in the late 1990s, filmmaker Harmony Korine undertook a project that, in many ways, still defines his artistic ambition. The abandoned documentary Fight Harm saw Korine trawling the streets of New York City, instigating brawls with random passersby. (Leonardo DiCaprio and magician David Blaine reportedly served as the film’s …