The Final Year

Aug 23, 2017 — We’re opening today’s entry with the “goings on” items because today’s must-read comes from Bilge Ebiri in the Village Voice. He assures us that he’s “not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been waiting most of my life to see...

Aug 18, 2017 — In this unsparing drama, Mike Leigh captures the grim mood of Thatcher’s England through the frustrations of a working-class London family.

Jul 17, 2017 — “Steven Spielberg laid claim to the Normandy beach landing,” begins Variety’s Peter Debruge, “Clint Eastwood owns Iwo Jima, and now, Christopher Nolan has authored the definitive cinematic version of Dunkirk. Unlike those other battles, however, this last was not a...

Jul 17, 2017 — We begin this round in the UK because, starting Friday, Park Circus is putting Basil Dearden’s Victim (1961) back in theaters, “marking 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 initiated a major development of the country's human rights legislation...

Jun 1, 2017 — Suffused with a quiet radiance, this Kazakh New Wave masterpiece grapples with cultural displacement through an allegorical tale of vengeance.

May 27, 2017 — “Some filmmakers rust during periods of inactivity,” begins Guy Lodge in Variety. “Lynne Ramsay arches and tenses, lying in wait like an attack dog. And attack she does, though not in all the expected ways, in her astonishing fourth feature...

May 25, 2017 — “Sergei Loznitsa’s documentaries are conceived as silent commentary,” begins Jay Weissberg in Variety. “His rigorously edited, coolly composed shots contain all the information needed for viewers to feel the weight of his argument. By contrast, his fiction films (My Joy,...

May 24, 2017 — Cannes kicked off the 1980s with a Palme d’Or win for a giant of Japanese cinema entering the final stages of his career. Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (the title of which literally translates as “shadow warrior”) follows a small-time thief who...

May 22, 2017 — Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer “makes the absurd, amazing The Lobster seem like a warm and cuddly experience by comparison,” declares Jessica Kiang at the Playlist. “A film of clean hands, cold heart, and near-Satanic horror, it...

May 17, 2017 — “For its 70th anniversary,” begins Boyd van Hoeij in the Hollywood Reporter, “the Cannes Film Festival has, very appropriately, chosen to open with a film by French auteur Arnaud Desplechin, a Cannes discovery whose feature debut, The Sentinel, played in...