He Was Once

Jan 5, 1993 — All right, I’ll just say it. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the most sublimely irreverent, most jaw-droppingly hysterical movie of the last twenty years. How many films, after all, have Knights who say “Ni!,” filth-eating peasants, and 160...

Oct 23, 2024 — This once-maligned horror film is an unsparing exploration of sexual violence, remarkably centered on a complex, fully realized female protagonist, played courageously by Barbara Hershey.

Jan 3, 2023 — With lists, polls, and remembrances, we look back once again to the year that was.

Sep 28, 2021 — Adoption was the first Hungarian film to compete in Berlin—and the first film directed by a woman to win the Golden Bear.

Feb 18, 2016 — The Kid marked Charlie Chaplin’s wholehearted embrace of sentiment, which he intertwined with the slapstick he was known for to enrich his Tramp character and carry the narrative of feature-length directorial debut.

Mar 29, 2013 — When the world’s favorite comedian asked his audience to see him as a sociopathic serial killer, he was venturing where cinema had barely dared to tread.

Jan 11, 1999 — This epic reimagining of medieval Russia was the most historically audacious production made in the twenty-odd years after Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible.

May 18, 2026 — Critics are taking to Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, Radu Jude’s The Diary of a Chambermaid, and Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid.

Mar 20, 2026 — This week: Thierry Frémaux on the Lumière brothers, Lynne Littman and Jane Alexander on Testament, and Christian Petzold on Hitchcock.

Mar 19, 2026 — To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of VHS, the director and the editor of Videoheaven discuss how this game-changing format shaped their lives and imaginations and left a seismic impact on the film industry.