Being There

Dec 15, 1986 — It has been estimated that one out of four feature films made in America before the mid-1960s was a western. Since approximately 35,000 features were released in this country in the 70 years after the introduction of film, this would...

Sep 9, 2025 — Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley enthrall critics with their portrayals of parents mourning the loss of a child.

Apr 22, 2024 — Fiercely committed to the possibilities of political art, the trailblazing director talks about how her intersectional understanding of feminism imbues her films, three of which are now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Nov 22, 2022 — Spike Lee’s transcendent portrait of an American hero is an urgent call for the nation to live up to everything it claims to be.

Aug 16, 2022 — The Safdie brothers drew inspiration from their childhood memories for their first feature as codirectors, a terrifying yet wondrous portrait of an unpredictable father.

May 5, 2022 — Has Asian American cinematic representation really reached unprecedented heights, as almost all recent film coverage on the subject claims? In the past two years, critics’ polls, New York Times features, and Golden Globes scandals have marked the newfound success of...

Mar 5, 2021 — When the photographer Mary Ellen Mark died in 2015 at age seventy-five from myelodysplastic syndrome, she left behind a vast and varied five-decade trail of portraits and documentary pictures, collected in twenty books and dozens of exhibitions, radical in their...

Nov 19, 2020 — This month, we’re sorting through new books featuring—for starters—Jean-Luc Godard, Marguerite Duras, Billy Wilder, Geraldine Chaplin, and Harmony Korine.

Sep 16, 2020 — When I think of Albert Brooks, the first image that invariably comes to mind is that of a worry-stricken man desperately impressing his anxieties upon a bemused, notably less nebbishy partner, presenting an elaborate case for the legitimacy of those...

Apr 15, 2020 — While three parallel programs have cancelled, Cannes still holds out hope for a 2020 edition. Here’s the latest on how the virus is affecting cinema.