Our Way To The Sea

Jan 17, 2018 — The Berlin International Film Festival has now completed the lineups for two of its programs, Forum Expanded and Generation. Back in December, the Berlinale announced a first round of Generation titles selected for younger viewers, so what we have today...

Sep 1, 2017 — “There are any number of unforgettable images in Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow, the most necessary and comprehensive documentary to date about our planet’s current refugee crisis,” writes IndieWire’s David Ehrlich, “but the most indelible of them all is borrowed from...

Nov 25, 2020 — “Yes, life is a dream, but sometimes that dream is a fatal abyss.” Wanda in The White Sheik (1952) I have a vivid memory from the first film-studies class I enrolled in, a class on Italian neorealism, where the weekly...

Feb 26, 2020 — Before making history last year as the first black woman director to compete at Cannes, Mati Diop had been spending the previous ten years articulating her unique vision in a series of five acclaimed short films. The praise Diop has...

Aug 28, 2019 — 1. Before he became a filmmaker, D. A. Pennebaker’s ambition was to play stride piano like Fats Waller. “What changed your mind?” I asked him. “Well,” Penny replied, “after I saw Fats play . . . ” Penny would have...

Feb 9, 2010 — You can’t keep a good woman, or a great movie about a good woman, down. By all accounts, goodness in the real Lola Montez reflected the vagaries of character, not talent. She was, as Cosmo Brown says of Lina Lamont...

Mar 24, 2026 — Martin Scorsese’s powerful drama, which recounts a series of killings that devastated the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma, turns the historical epic into a Möbius strip that blurs audience, film, and director.

Dec 6, 2022 — Known for their austerity and shocking moments of violence, the Austrian director’s first three films cultivate a kind of humanism in their dogged refusal to coddle the viewer.

Dec 8, 2021 — One of the liveliest and most perceptive cultural critics is gone at sixty-four.

Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda In September 2018, I screened Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places for the Michigan State University Film Collective. We had a lively discussion that went past the scheduled ending time. As I was getting...