Life and Nothing But

Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?

Jul 8, 2013 — With its marvelous, distinctive camera work, Kenji Mizoguchi’s searing drama is as technically remarkable as it is humane.

Dec 11, 2012 — The climate change expert discusses how Godfrey Reggio’s films presaged widespread concern about global warming and warned about the dangers of consumerism.

Nov 25, 2025 — Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella Traumnovelle, Stanley Kubrick’s final film is a deeply personal examination of the fragility of marriage and the destructive power of sexual fantasy.

Nov 7, 2025 — Ira Sachs’s new film opens this week, plus: Joy Williams on Gene Hackman and Claire Atherton’s work with Chantal Akerman.

Aug 9, 2022 — An indie pioneer whose life was cut tragically short, the Texas filmmaker found grace in the tedium of repressive small-town existence.

Jul 13, 2022 — Stylistically informed by film noir, Martin Scorsese’s searing drama plumbs male violence and rage through a boxing champ’s self-destruction.

Feb 15, 2022 — Playful irreverence gives way to tragedy and transcendence in Leo McCarey’s 1939 masterwork, one of the defining romances of the Hollywood studio era.

Aug 14, 2016 — While considered to lie outside the highly policed boundaries of film noir, films like Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind and Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes nevertheless share many of noir’s stylistic and thematic tropes.

Feb 3, 2016 — For more than two decades, photographer Gregory Crewdson has been creating otherworldly images that reveal an eerie side of Americana. His works, typically tableaux of small-town life, transform the everyday into the uncanny.