On the Black Hill

Aug 25, 2022 — While working on our edition of Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece, producer Abbey Lustgarten found out how the director achieved some of the movie’s most evocative visual and sonic effects.

May 18, 2022 — Just slightly northwest of Death Valley, in what is now eastern California, a mountain range carves out the eastern edge of the Owens Valley. Sculpted by bedrock pushed between tectonic faults during the late Proterozoic to Cambrian periods, the Inyo...

Aug 17, 2021 — D. A. Pennebaker turns his camera on Stephen Sondheim and the cast of his breakthrough musical in this revelatory documentary about artists at work.

Mar 25, 2021 — In With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, an autobiography cowritten by legendary creative and life partners Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Dee tells the story of working as a screenwriter on 1968’s Uptight. It’s a brief account, about...

Jan 29, 2021 — This week sees a new publication, a revived column, and countless hours of conversations about movies.

Sep 24, 2020 — As video games have evolved into a technological and economic behemoth, they have attracted some consumer attention and spending away from movies. In part to appeal to filmgoers accustomed to the high production values of the big screen, large-budget games...

Mar 1, 2018 — This year’s edition of the True/False Film Fest opens today in Columbia, Missouri and runs through Sunday. “The festival focuses on nonfiction films, though True/False’s definition of the term is intentionally porous,” writes Aarik Danielsen during the course of his...

Feb 25, 2018 — “James Baldwin and Karl Marx—the subjects of my two most recent films—were my two primary teachers; each in his own way taught me how to think, how to be, how to engage,” writes Raoul Peck, director of I Am Not...

Jan 16, 2018 — The ravages of poverty in contemporary Britain are translated with vivid authenticity in this drama from celebrated filmmaker Ken Loach.

Dec 15, 2017 — The International Film Festival Rotterdam has been rolling out the lineup for its 2018 edition (January 24 through February 4) in quick spurts over the past few weeks, and it’s far from complete. But there’s already more than enough to...