Diary

Aug 11, 2020 — I’ve often found that the most successful short films and short stories apply what Ernest Hemingway called the “iceberg theory,” distilling a larger narrative into a very specific moment that allows audiences to infer the bigger picture in their own...

Jun 10, 2020 — Years ago I took a seminar on movie stars led by the writer Wayne Koestenbaum, a glittering episode that closed out a rather colorless stint in graduate school. The syllabus was replete with inspired double bills⁠—Deleuze on Leibniz + Lana...

May 28, 2020 — Check out what’s in store next month on our streaming service!

May 27, 2020 — Walking, like breathing, is something we do without thinking, an activity so commonplace that pedestrian has as its second meaning uninspired, ordinary, dull. Movies, however, reveal this action as more than just the original mode of getting from here to...

May 19, 2020 — The range was remarkable, but the projects Piccoli selected and the directors he chose to work with are what make his body of work essential.

Apr 16, 2020 — Olivia Laing and Rebecca Mead find restorative consolation in the writing of the renowned filmmaker, painter, and gardener.

Apr 6, 2020 — An actress herself, Bosworth understood her subjects as few writers could. Plus: The latest in home viewing.

Mar 24, 2020 — Edgar Wright, Rian Johnson, and Natasha Lyonne have some home viewing recommendations.

Mar 17, 2020 — Released in, or rather let loose upon, the first year of the new millennium, Spike Lee’s febrile and ferocious media satire Bamboozled—the fifteenth feature-length “joint” of a prolific career—found its writer-director in an unflinching mode and an unforgiving mood. According...

Feb 21, 2020 — Reflections from Bong Joon-ho’s interpreter and a report from the set of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria open this week’s wide-ranging round.