To the Stars

Mar 24, 2018 — Just a day or two after Stephen Hawking left us on March 14, Isaac Butler called up Errol Morris for Slate to talk about A Brief History of Time (1991), the documentary that takes it title from Hawking’s surprise bestseller....

Mar 8, 2018 — Let’s start with some festival news, primarily because a big one, SXSW, is opening tomorrow in Austin. Jay Duplass is on the cover of the new issue of the Austin Chronicle, which features a whopping preview package. “Few filmmaker names...

Jan 10, 2018 — Before looking back on the highlights of his 2017 in an entry for Filmmaker, Vadim Rizov has a note or two on attending the recent New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner: The very concept of a critics’ award ceremony...

Feb 17, 2016 — Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 masterpiece of silent cinema, The Kid, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. In this film, his feature-length directorial debut, Chaplin stars as his already iconic Tramp character alongside a young Jackie Coogan, who plays the orphan...

Aug 15, 2012 — The idea that Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have an uncanny ability to get right on top of the action in a scene without their camera’s ever feeling intrusive—to actors or viewers—is a common refrain in discussions of the Belgian directors’...

Dec 26, 2011 — Noël Coward’s play Design for Living was produced for Broadway in 1933, starring Coward, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne. But it started life back in 1921. Coward was on his first impoverished visit to America. He arrived in New York...

Jul 27, 2018 — Olivier Assayas calls Blain “one of the great, underrated, unknown, under-recognized filmmakers of his time.”

Mar 23, 2018 — Amy Poehler, seen above with Tina Fey in Sisters (2015), “will make her feature directorial debut with Wine Country, a Netflix comedy she will also star in and produce.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit: “Poehler has assembled an all-star lineup...

Sep 24, 2015 — It’s a film that stars David Bowie, so it should come as no surprise that Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth is as richly layered sonically as it is visually. However, although Bowie wrote songs for the sci-fi...

Nov 16, 2017 — Preston Sturges’s screwball masterpiece, about a glamorous con artist who fleeces a naïve millionaire, screens in Baltimore this week.