He Was Once

Jul 27, 2017 — Venice International Film Festival director Alberto Barbara has presented the lineup for the seventy-fourth edition (August 30 through September 9) at a press conference in Rome. I’ve gathered notes and trailers.CompetitionAi Weiwei’s Human Flow. From the Hollywood Reporter’s Tatiana Siegel:...

Mar 13, 2017 — In late 2016, I was commissioned by the Criterion Collection to photograph the cover and interiors for the edition of Andrew Haigh’s masterful 45 Years. I’m a photographer and artist based in the UK, and I had first worked with...

Feb 16, 2016 — In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima spins a complex aesthetic web around his documentary-like structure, packing detail, history, politics, and emotion into his surrealist inquiry into capital punishment.

Sep 22, 2015 — Two precocious youngsters try to carve out a corner of the world just for themselves in Wes Anderson’s alternately melancholy and boisterous tale of growing pains.

Mar 16, 2015 — Director and star Robert Montgomery suffuses his moody 1947 New Mexico–set noir with palpable postwar anxiety and expressive fatalism.

Feb 10, 2015 — The late film scholar beautifully analyzes the visual lyricism of the French master’s legendary short work.

Feb 3, 2015 — Jean-Luc Godard returned to the character-driven intensity of his earlier films with this satirical but serious-minded take on men, women, and money.

Jul 28, 2014 — Jacques Demy’s first full-fledged storybook fantasy challenges and subverts traditional fairy-tale norms.

Jun 19, 2014 — PerformancesTime has added some latter-day ironies to All That Heaven Allows, and not just the revelation that its star Rock Hudson was gay. There’s also the political career of Ronald Reagan, the ex-husband of Hudson’s costar, Jane Wyman—built on the...

May 28, 2013 — Mike Leigh’s breakthrough is a funny film about serious things, and an emotional and slyly political take on consumer culture.