Two by South

Thanks to the two most famous roles of her career—the enigmatic woman referred to only as A in Alain Resnais’ _Last Year at Marienbad_ and the middle-aged widow stuck in domestic routine in Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du...

Feb 9, 2010 — You can’t keep a good woman, or a great movie about a good woman, down. By all accounts, goodness in the real Lola Montez reflected the vagaries of character, not talent. She was, as Cosmo Brown says of Lina Lamont...

Apr 27, 2009 — The idea of making a film about Japan’s most famous sex crime, with a decent budget and in conditions of complete freedom, reawakened Nagisa Oshima’s desire to direct—and the prospect of circumventing Japanese censorship must have made the decision even...

Mar 17, 2008 — In its portrayal of the long international arm of crime families, Alberto Lattuada’s ingenious comedy offers a prescient look at globalization.

Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.

Jun 2, 2016 — Kings of the Road is the most “roadish” of Wenders’s road movies, a film about travel as a form of escape for two German men and the transitory bond they form along the way.

Dec 9, 2025 — In her Cannes-award-winning narrative feature debut, Mira Nair sees the lives of Indian street children with an unconditionally generous gaze, taking in their world in all its contradictions and complexity.

Sep 29, 2025 — Notes on new studies of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick and biographies of Jane Birkin and Terrence Malick.

May 27, 2025 — A landmark of independent cinema, Charles Burnett’s debut feature captures daily life in Watts, Los Angeles, with a depth and precision that evokes the history of Black American music.

Jun 25, 2024 — Barry Jenkins’s extraordinarily ambitious limited series distinguishes itself in the tradition of the cinematic slavery epic through its understanding that Black joy and Black trauma cannot be cleaved from each other.