The Watch

Jan 14, 2025 — In his only directorial effort for the big screen, Richard Pryor takes the raw stuff of his life and alchemizes it as art, demonstrating the humor and vulnerability that made him a towering figure in American culture.

Nov 22, 2022 — Spike Lee’s transcendent portrait of an American hero is an urgent call for the nation to live up to everything it claims to be.

Jan 14, 2022 — This week we’re watching and reading about Tom Noonan, Jean Vigo, Marie-Claude Treilhou, and Miklós Jancsó.

Aug 30, 2021 — An electrifying voice in American independent cinema, the filmmaker, artist, and DJ Ephraim Asili believes that moving images can revolutionize our perception of the world. His body of work attests to this conviction. Since he began making films more than...

Aug 6, 2021 — Conversations with Agnès Godard and Brian De Palma and tributes to Chris Marker and Menelik Shabazz are among this week’s highlights.

Feb 13, 2021 — Ify Chiejina is a Nigerian American artist from Queens, New York, with a multifaceted process that incorporates drawing, painting, collage, and pattern design, resulting in a distinctive approach to portraiture. Her work speaks to themes of family, identity, and a...

Feb 5, 2021 — This week we’re reading Nick Pinkerton on Fassbinder’s problems with Chabrol and revisiting films by Marguerite Duras, Lizzie Borden, and Béla Tarr.

Jul 3, 2020 — One Scene By 2008, Olivier Assayas was perhaps best known as a director of fraught, emotionally intense, experimentally structured thrillers such as Irma Vep (1996), demonlover (2002), and Boarding Gate (2007), so the contemplative quiet of the feature he released...

Apr 22, 2020 — One of the true dark glories of the Czechoslovak New Wave, The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol, 1969) is the most popular and indelible work by the underappreciated Juraj Herz and remained a firm favorite of the director’s among his many films....

Mar 11, 2020 — One Scene With his Oscar-nominated debut feature, Beasts of the Southern Wild, director Benh Zeitlin brought to the screen a vision of Louisiana that combined the unique flavors and textures of his adopted home state with the magical twists and...