The Call

Feb 4, 2021 — Here’s an overview of what critics have been saying about this year’s winners.

Jan 20, 2021 — Knausgaard on Bergman and Adam Nayman on Armond White on Steven Spielberg are among this month’s highlights.

Dec 4, 2020 — Forty years after her death, people still imitate Mae West’s voice: that slinky contralto drawl that hit each Brooklyn-inflected vowel like a cab driver leaning on his horn. The voice would be memorable even if she had by some wild...

Dec 3, 2020 — One of cinema’s preeminent directors is currently at work on two new projects.

Nov 18, 2020 — In Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983), often considered the essay film, we meet the wildcat video game designer Hayao Yamaneko, who imports scenes from his life into his memory machine. The machine is shown only in parts: a slider being...

Aug 17, 2020 — Louise Brooks, Oliver Stone, James Stewart, Andy Warhol, and more are here to help relieve this year’s summer doldrums.

Aug 14, 2020 — Appreciations of Kathleen Collins and Vittorio De Sica and interviews with James Mangold, Orson Welles, and Billy Wilder are among this week’s highlights.

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...

Jul 27, 2020 — The first shot of Atom Egoyan’s 1984 debut feature, Next of Kin, is a ground-level pan across the baggage claim section at Toronto’s Pearson Airport. The camera is angled so that our gaze is on the various pieces of luggage...

Jul 21, 2020 — Consider this an afterword to Taste of Cherry (1997), the feature that brought its director, Abbas Kiarostami, to full international prominence, after it became the first Iranian movie to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (where it...