Michael Mann
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30 Years On, The Heat Is Around The Corner. And In Several TV Shows
Released 30 years ago, Michael Mann’s Heat is an almost-three-hour-long odyssey through Los Angeles and the minds of two ideologically opposed men who inhabit it. Codes are established and broken, thrills are tempered by sobering terror, paths are chosen and exit routes mapped. If high-level thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) has steeled himself to sever relationships to anyone or anything at a moment’s notice, the man pursuing him, police detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), is defined by a refusal to let go. He holds on to his angst, he tells his wife (Diane Venora), refusing to engage in cathartic […]
by Gayle Sequeira on Dec 19, 2025 -
Composer and Musician Michael Brook on “Heat,” U2 and Hans Zimmer
Michael Brook has collaborated with some of the most influential filmmakers and musicians of the last 40 years without ever threatening to become a household name. When I spoke to the inventor and composer last month at the Warsaw Film Festival, I asked if he valued the recognition of awards bodies, to which he explained with typical candor that “almost everything I do is not the kind of thing that the Academy is interested in, and that’s fine.” Brook got his first break in 1984 when he convinced Brian Eno, then a customer in the Toronto video lab where he […]
by Rory O'Connor on Dec 3, 2025 -
Trailer Watch: Michael Mann’s Ferrari
A teaser has landed for Michael Mann’s Ferrari ahead of its Venice world premiere tomorrow. Mann’s long-awaited return will then screen at the New York Film Festival before it hits theaters just in time for the holidays. Based on Brock Yates’s book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine, the film stars Adam Driver as the eponymous race car driver and entrepreneur, Penélope Cruz as his wife Laura and Shailene Woodley as his mistress Lina Lardi. Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell and Patrick Dempsey also star. Per an official synopsis: It is the summer of 1957. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 30, 2023 -
Michael Mann’s Ferrari Announced as the 61st New York Film Festival’s Closing Night Film
Today, Film at Lincoln Center reveals that the 61st New York Film Festival’s Closing Night film will be Michael Mann‘s Ferrari. Starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferarri and Penélope Cruz as his wife Laura, the film will have its North American premiere at this year’s NYFF, which runs from September 29 through October 15. A synopsis provided by a FLC press release reads: Michael Mann (Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider) brings his astonishing command of technique and storytelling to bear on this emotional, elegantly crafted dramatization of the life of the legendary race car manufacturer and entrepreneur Enzo […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 27, 2023 -
Everybody’s in Showbiz: The ‘80s Downtown Actors of Miami Vice
Between 9 and 11 p.m. on Friday, September 27, 1985, after Knight Rider and before the late local news, one of every five American TV sets was tuned to NBC to see the theatrical impresario who would send his casts into audiences to beg for change, was arrested for indecency after stripping alongside ticket buyers and had disrupted his own trial for tax evasion with spasms of poetry. Julian Beck, cofounder of The Living Theatre, appears in the feature-length season two premiere of Miami Vice as a Mephistophelean financier. Cultured and skeletal—Beck died of cancer before the episode aired—the trickster-god […]
by Mark Asch on Apr 8, 2021 -
“One Thing I Learned From Michael Mann, You’ve Got to Have Rules”: Brooke Kennedy on The Good Fight
In the first episode of The Good Fight, a spinoff from and sequel to the acclaimed legal drama The Good Wife, liberal attorney Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) watches Donald Trump’s inauguration in horror. In the premiere episode of the series’ most recent season (season four), Diane wakes up to find herself in an alternate reality in which Hillary Clinton won the presidency. Both episodes – and the 38 others that have aired to date – exhibit a satirical sense as sophisticated as it is original; series creators Robert and Michelle King consistently engage with issues related to race, sex, gender, […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 16, 2020 -
I Say What I Mean
Though popularly acclaimed for its thrillingly choreographed action scenes and the convergence of two of America’s great film stars, Heat (1995) endures because of its layered psychological matrix. Michael Mann interrogates masculinity, as performance and as ideology, across a cat-and-mouse genre template, crafting a diffuse portrait of ethical codes. This modus operandi, combined with Mann’s trademark urban hyperaesthetic—neon cityscapes; dark, empty roads; abandoned lots; dingy warehouses; underpopulated diners, all shot on locations off the beaten path—has elevated the material to classic status. It’s a basic-cable staple that’s also a richly studied, endlessly probed auteurist text. In other words, the perfect […]
by Vikram Murthi on Sep 4, 2019 -
Watch: Michael Mann’s Blackhat and “The Ghost in the Circuit”
Despite a divisive critical reception and box office numbers, Michael Mann’s Blackhat has spawned a number of video essays since its release in early 2015. In his essay, Federico Palmerini examines the spectral nature of the Internet and its relationship to the film.
by Marc Nemcik on Jul 13, 2016 -
Watch: Michael Mann Discusses His Entire Career
As part of their recent retrospective on Michael Mann, BAM had the man himself sit down for a 77-minute talk moderated by critic Bilge Ebiri. They begin, logically, at the beginning, with Mann discussing how growing up in Chicago shaped his visual sensibility, and go from there.
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 24, 2016 -
Michael Mann Interviews Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu about The Revenant
Here’s a pairing! Two notoriously obsessive, driven, perfectionist and demanding directors in an on-stage dialogue. The DGA hosted this talk between Alejandro González Iñárritu and Michael Mann about the former’s epic frontier saga, The Revenant. Says the director of Heat and Miami Vice, The Revenant “embraces the totality of life, nature and experience… not like anything I’ve seen before.” Check out the detailed, candid conversation above or below.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 1, 2016
