On Film

First Person

The author of The Fortress of Solitude considers the meditative, “brain-rinsing” effects of the solo moviegoing experience.

From Hitchcock’s orbit to The Architecture of Cinematic Spaces, here’s some of this month’s best writing on new books.

A monument of Italian literature, Carlo Levi’s novelistic memoir comes to the screen in a remarkably faithful adaptation that habituates viewers to close, attentive perception.

The New Yorker’s music critic traces the history of the composer’s impact on art, culture, and the movies.

After opening TIFF, this dynamic yet unobtrusive documentation of the hit Broadway show now heads to the NYFF.

Did You See This?

The late scholar Robert Bird’s final essay on Tarkovsky and fresh writing on Béla Tarr, Eric Rohmer, and more are among this week’s highlights.

Antonio Campos’s The Devil All the Time and Sean Durkin’s The Nest have A.V. Club writers revisiting the films they’ve made with Josh Mond.

The designers of the highly anticipated video game Ghost of Tsushima look back on the work and research that went into translating the influence of chanbara classics into their own medium.

Glenn Kenny’s new book on Scorsese’s Goodfellas scores raves and Coppola has been tinkering with The Godfather again.

Anxiety, panic, and chronic ambivalence course through the hilarious films of one of America’s most influential comedic voices.

For some, this nineteenth-century love story “never catches fire,” but for others, it’s “one of the finest films of the year.”

Grafted together from a wide array of sources, Claire Denis’s most acclaimed film combines cerebral rigor, sensorial intensity, and a powerful meditation on masculinity and foreignness.

Golden Lion for Chloé Zhao! Plus a look at what the critics have to say about all the award winners.

Did You See This?

On our minds this week: New Taiwan Cinema of the 1980s, Black cinema’s “paradoxical role in American cultural history,” the new Brooklyn Rail, and more.

As Toronto opens, here’s an overview of early critical response to some of the festival’s titles arriving directly from their premieres in Venice.

In this in-depth interview, the legendary photographer and filmmaker explains how a lifetime of compulsive movie-watching has influenced her artistic practice.

Performances

In the first of his two collaborations with Satyajit Ray, the Bengali superstar did not just rely on his image, he enriched it with a unique blend of charisma and craft.

The in-demand performer stars in two films in competition, Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman and Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come.

Always a lively presence on-screen, Menzel also directed Closely Watched Trains and I Served the King of England.

Did You See This?

Black directors recommend films that have had an impact on their work. Also this week: Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, Yasuzo Masumura, Takashi Miike, and Alan Clarke.

Tilda Swinton stars in a free adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play.

The festival opens with a winning oddity from Greece and an Italian time-hopping family drama.

Festival directors join Venice head Alberto Barbera, who encourages the industry to get back up and running again.

Childishly anarchic in worldview and distinctly analog in look, the animated films of Bill Plympton are a testament to the pleasures of painstaking craftsmanship.