On Film

Did You See This?

Serge Daney on Sergei Parajanov, James Quandt on Robert Bresson, and Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin on Maurice Pialat are among this week’s highlights.

Coaxed out of retirement, the actor and singer is winning plaudits for his powerfully understated performance in The Irishman.

The year will begin with new films by Josephine Decker, Kirsten Johnson, Dee Rees, Sean Durkin, and Michael Almereyda.

Songbook

Heard three times in Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age drama, the R&B legend’s cover of “California Dreamin’ ” highlights the teenage heroine’s yearning for connection and escape.

Often credited with inciting full enforcement of the Hays Code, this harrowing melodrama is one of the few Faulkner adaptations that successfully evokes the writer’s distinctive ambience and unsettling contradictions.

The Gotham Awards honor Noah Baumbach’s gripping divorce story and pay tribute to an endearing actress.

Performances

Played with icy restraint, the bully at the heart of Irving Rapper’s classic woman’s picture is a prime example of how Hollywood melodramas shaped the archetype of the villainous mother.

For Sama is the surprise winner at the the British Independent Film Awards, and John Waters picks his favorite films of 2019.

A thought-provoking experiment in cinematic form, the new film by Michael Koresky, Jeff Reichert, and Farihah Zaman meditates on the power of food and community through an innovative mix of truth and fiction.

Did You See This?

American gangsters, Chinese filmmakers, and a Czech animator are featured in this week’s round.

The BBC polls 368 critics and programmers to come up with a list of the greatest films directed by women—plus more of the best of the 2010s and 2019.

A smart and lively adaptation of a 150-year-old classic is warmly greeted in the first round of reviews.

Full of booze, bons mots, and backstabbing, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s impeccably crafted showbiz drama is the rare movie where—as its star, Bette Davis, once put it—“it all came out right.”

Perhaps the quintessential woman’s film of its era, this saga of self-discovery captures Bette Davis at the height of her reign at Warner Bros.

The filmmaker, critic, and professor’s passion for cinema was contagious.

Critics are praising the French New Wave icon’s joyous and reflective final film, which hits theaters in New York this week.

A richly varied showcase of Korean films made between 1996 and 2003 opens in New York.

Two lovers cross boundaries both personal and national in this ambitious, zigzagging love story, one of the most romantic films of this century.

A new collection of essays connects the dots between Farber’s paintings and film criticism.

Contributors to RogerEbert.com and the A.V. Club as well as Time’s Stephanie Zacharek and more pick their favorite films of the decade.

Underneath its brilliantly colored, highly stylized surfaces, this key work of 1980s French cinema is a heartrending portrait of a woman struggling to both inhabit and reject traditionally feminine roles.

A new restoration of the novelist and critic’s debut feature opens in New York on Friday.

Under the Influence

The director of Frankie and Keep the Lights On opens up about how the emotional and sexual candor of Chantal Akerman’s feature debut has inspired his own deeply personal approach to cinema.

Whether sublimated or made explicit, that longing feeling so specific to the queer experience has always existed in the movies. A new series on the Criterion Channel dives into this richly layered but long-suppressed cinematic history.