This Is It

Oct 13, 2009 — This week marks the publication of Jonathan Lethem’s new novel, Chronic City, another captivating journey through mysterious New York with a host of peculiar characters (and a sci-fi twist), including a certain cinephile who finds his way into the offices of...

Sep 22, 2009 — A new era in popular music deserves a new era in filmmaking—that’s the basis of the perfect, fortuitous match-up between rock and cinema in D.A. Pennebaker’s concert film.

Jun 23, 2008 — The year 1950 marked a turning point in Anthony Mann’s career, the moment when he passed from the series of brilliant film-noir B movies that had established him to the westerns that made him a major figure. Mann released three...

Jun 27, 2005 — Kô Nakahira’s taboo-busting melodrama heralded a reinvention of Japanese cinema.

Apr 16, 2009 — Next week, we release a definitive, three-disc set of the short documentaries of Jean Painlevé (1902–89), the pioneering French scientist-educator-filmmaker (and sometime Dadaist) whose mesmerizing studies of marine life, especially, have been attracting wide audiences and new fans for decades...

Oct 24, 2025 — It is hard to conceive of a film more dazzlingly, dizzyingly divided against itself—or one more appropriately so—than this delirious creation of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and director Ken Russell.

Sep 26, 2023 — In this vibrant, music-filled portrait of an artist and his community, director Luis Valdez gathers what little is known about rock-and-roll idol Ritchie Valens and fuses it with a lived-in understanding of what it is to be Chicano.

Sep 13, 2023 — Andrew Bujalski has written and directed seven feature films. He types 89 wpm. When he sent over his list, he included the following note: “Can I preface this by saying this is absolutely not a top ten list? Ranking GOATs...

Jul 8, 2021 — Some critics find it better than Synonyms, and while others don’t, everyone agrees that this is the Israeli director’s “most radical movie yet.”

Jun 19, 2019 — Jeremy Workman is a documentary filmmaker and award-winning editor of movie trailers, specifically for art-house, documentary, and foreign films. His latest documentary, The World Before Your Feet, was released to critical acclaim last November and played in movie theaters into...