American Movie

Nov 26, 2019 — In a key scene of the beloved Bette Davis film Now, Voyager (1942), the heroine goes to dinner on a cruise ship wearing a cloak decorated with fritillaries. A fritillary is a spangled butterfly, and the scene signals that Charlotte...

Nov 20, 2019 — A new collection of essays connects the dots between Farber’s paintings and film criticism.

Nov 19, 2019 — Contributors to RogerEbert.com and the A.V. Club as well as Time’s Stephanie Zacharek and more pick their favorite films of the decade.

Nov 19, 2019 — In 1989, film critic Raphaël Bassan coined the term cinéma du look. Describing a tendency in French cinema that had begun in the early eighties and would continue into the nineties, Bassan identified commonalities in the work of Jean-Jacques Beineix,...

Nov 12, 2019 — Thai filmmaker Sorayos Prapapan’s Death of the Sound Man begins with a black screen accompanied by the mysterious but unmistakably sexual sound of someone slurping. Shortly after, the first shot reveals a young man in a sound booth fellating a...

Nov 11, 2019 — This month we’re reading about the women (and men) of Hollywood, weighing arguments from all corners, and picking up an overlooked novel.

Nov 8, 2019 — A digital resurrection, an image book, and a painting of a hammer all figure in this week’s round.

Nov 6, 2019 — Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker’s Town Bloody Hall (1979) is one of the highlights in a program of over 300 films.

Nov 4, 2019 — The Viennese avant-gardiste recontextualized found footage to create a landmark trilogy.

Nov 1, 2019 — No studio embraced the artistic potential and infectious joie de vivre of the movie musical like MGM did in the 1940s and ’50s. Built from the stuff of dreams, the form became a showcase for some of the most versatile...