A Useful Life

Jul 9, 2007 — Hiroshi Teshigahara’s first feature is the kind of uncanny, equivocally realist movie you might hope to duck into in a strange city, stumbling across it in a low-rent theater while escaping a bad date or a debt collector.

Jun 25, 2007 — Chris Marker’s masterpiece is a cinematic essay and travel film made up of asides and digressions that form a portrait of late twentieth-century civilization.

Apr 29, 2024 — From After Hours to Mikey and Nicky to Collateral, movies centered on the twists and turns of a single night give filmmakers the chance to boldly experiment with cinematic time and space.

Feb 15, 2023 — Programmers discuss their selections and the Forum runs a series of rich essays.

Aug 23, 2018 — The director of Computer Chess and Support the Girls finds in John Cassavetes a surrealist whose weirdest set pieces could make David Lynch blush.

Apr 12, 2017 — British director Jack Clayton elicited landmark performances from a host of great ladies of the cinema, including Maggie Smith, Deborah Kerr, and Anne Bancroft.

Jan 10, 2018 — The director of the war masterpiece Come and See got his start lampooning social conformity in 1960s Soviet life. Two of his early-career gems are now available on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck.

May 21, 2007 — Carol Reed’s masterpiece dives deep into the life and mind of screenwriter Graham Greene, one of Britain’s greatest postwar novelist.

Sep 25, 2020 — This week there’s a new Film Quarterly and a new frieze and fresh conversations with Jan Oxenberg and Paul Cronin.

Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.