Bliss

Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...

Sep 15, 2020 — For some, this nineteenth-century love story “never catches fire,” but for others, it’s “one of the finest films of the year.”

Feb 3, 2020 — Nearly half of the awards presented over the weekend went to female filmmakers.

Jan 28, 2020 — Motherhood is a recurring subject in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. The mothers in his movies are fierce, passionate, and resourceful—often in varying combinations, and to varying extremes. In Almodóvar’s darkly satirical fourth feature, What Have I Done to Deserve...

Nov 21, 2019 — Every love affair requires a border crossing. The person you see across a crowded bar, or meet at a dinner party, or find on a dating app is another country altogether—maybe a nice place to visit, but do you really...

Oct 10, 2019 — Dark Passages Where the sea and the city meet, they corrupt each other. Around docks, the ocean’s margins are scummy with oil and floating garbage; the water corrodes hulls, encrusts pilings, and slimes steps. Ports cater to men who come...

Sep 25, 2019 — Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson star as a couple whose breakup turns nasty at the hands of “the divorce-industrial complex.”

Mar 26, 2019 — It’s the afternoon of February 8, 1964, and Ed Sullivan has assembled a gaggle of CBS ushers to talk about tomorrow night’s show, featuring the four lads from Liverpool who call themselves the Beetles—strike that, the Beatles. He needs to...

Mar 12, 2019 — The first few days have also seen premieres of new films by Lynn Shelton, Jonathan Levine, and Olivia Wilde.

Sep 17, 2018 — Once called “the great directorial genius of Hollywood” by Carole Lombard, Gregory La Cava struck comedy gold with this mix of madcap high jinks, irresistible romance, and social commentary.