Life Itself

May 21, 2013 — It’s tough to tell where reality ends and fiction begins in Haskell Wexler’s deft chronicle of a turbulent era.

Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...

Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...

Apr 9, 2013 — David Cronenberg and William S. Burroughs: it was a meeting of the mutant minds years in the making.

Mar 18, 2013 — Using a 1958 murder spree as a narrative springboard, Terrence Malick fashioned a fractured fairy tale about American innocence lost.

Feb 27, 2013 — More than eighty films into his career, Kenji Mizoguchi made this emotionally devastating masterpiece, from a story by Ogai Mori.

Feb 5, 2013 — Keisuke Kinoshita’s most experimental film is a resplendent, kabuki-inspired, folk-derived drama about mortality.

Jan 22, 2013 — With his unique use of new 3D technology, Wim Wenders found an unprecedented way for the movie camera to capture bodies in space.

Dec 18, 2012 — One Scene Every time I watch Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, I am stunned that a film could be so full. Here is this thing stuffed with detail, design, behavior, emotion, surprise, and skill. Like Fanny and Alexander and...

Dec 5, 2012 — The following is excerpted from an interview that originally appeared in the February 1, 1981, issue of L’avant-scène: Cinéma. It was conducted by Olivier Eyquem and Jean-Claude Missiaen. Eyquem is a documentalist and former staff member at Positif; he blogs...