The Way Way Back

Mar 9, 2020 — “My objective is to create my own world, and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are.” Andrei Tarkovsky More than three decades after his passing, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky retain their ability...

Jan 22, 2020 — Studio Visits Bursting with life, Brooklyn-based artist Josh Cochran’s work has a way of drawing you in—and rewarding your attention. About a decade and a half ago, Cochran—who grew up in Taiwan and attended art school in California, and was...

Dec 23, 2019 — Fear and desire lie at the heart of Peter Strickland’s cinema, whether he’s exploring those themes through the sonic, the sexual, the sartorial, or some diabolical combination of all three. With his masterful sense of film technique, the British director...

Dec 12, 2019 — Almost from the moment it arrived on screens in early 2006, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy was celebrated as a new milestone for American cinema, even an expression of independent filmmaking’s delayed arrival at maturity. In relating its deceptively simple tale...

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 7, 2019 — Two of the most spellbinding scenes in any Hollywood movie: In the first, Judy Garland, bedecked in a cinched, blue-and-white-striped dress, and topped with a long, auburn wig, sings of her longing for “the boy next door,” her adorable, ginger-peachy...

Oct 22, 2019 — Muhammad Ali was thirty-two years old when he arrived in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974 to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world. Thirty-two is not prohibitively old for a boxer in the heavyweight division. (As I type, the most...

Oct 15, 2019 — Born in Denmark to a wealthy family in 1879, Benjamin Christensen dropped out of medical school to receive training as an opera singer, only to lose his singing voice to what was diagnosed as an incurable nervous illness. He then...

Sep 2, 2019 — Dark Passages Thieves’ Highway A hay cart trundles through a sunny field above Fresno, California, in the opening shot of Thieves’ Highway. This is not an image you expect to see in film noir, which most often breeds in cities, alienated from the...

Aug 23, 2019 — After more than three decades in front of the camera, Natasha Lyonne understands a thing or two about what makes on-screen charisma. Previously best known for her early-career performances in films like Slums of Beverly Hills and But I’m a Cheerleader, she has in...