A Place in the World

Apr 29, 2025 — A gritty look at New York City’s underground economy through the eyes of an immigrant street hustler, Sean Baker’s third feature film demonstrates his gift for combining hardscrabble social realism and mischievous humor.

Feb 25, 2025 — Like many of the characters found throughout the director’s oeuvre, the alternative-press staffers at the center of her sophomore feature are bound up in a perpetual tug-of-war between past and present realities.

Nov 13, 2024 — The country’s largest festival of nonfiction films presents 110 features this year, and nearly as many short films.

Dec 5, 2023 — A tight-lipped stranger arrives in a gold-mining town. After checking into a hotel, he heads to Charlie’s Saloon, one of those gambling palaces with glittering chandeliers and be-feathered hostesses. He is told that Charlie “runs the town” and “owns a...

Apr 26, 2023 — The activist, singer, and actor dealt with stardom on his own terms.

Feb 13, 2023 — Desperately seeking community in her college years, the writer discovered the world of experimental cinema when she stumbled on a short-film program at an art-house in Manchester, England.

Dec 13, 2022 — A pioneering feminist artist drawn to universal themes, the Swedish director mined the complexity and humor of human behavior in films that courted controversy and cultivated a sense of detachment.

Sep 15, 2022 — Spielberg finally tells the story that has shaped so many of his films, and critics are loving it.

Mar 25, 2022 — This week’s reads include a survey of this year’s contenders, a look back to the last big sweep, and interviews with Wayne Wang and Valentyn Vasyanovych.

Nov 17, 2021 — Decades after Peter Lorre’s knife-toting creep Hans Beckert prowled the Berlin streets in search of little girls in Fritz Lang’s M (1931); after Robert Mitchum’s silver-tongued Harry Powell cut down all the “smooth and curly-haired things” he could get his...