The Day He Arrives

Aug 30, 2017 — “Can there be any clearer signal of reality warping as we hurtle toward imminent apocalypse than the fact that Alexander Payne has made a life-affirming film?” asks Jessica Kiang at the Playlist. “Venice opener Downsizing takes the long road getting...

Aug 23, 2017 — We’re opening today’s entry with the “goings on” items because today’s must-read comes from Bilge Ebiri in the Village Voice. He assures us that he’s “not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been waiting most of my life to see...

Aug 14, 2017 — A “collection of new image-making practices, technologies, and conditions of viewing embody a new era of the cinematic,” writes Holly Willis for the Los Angeles Review of Books. “And right along with these changes, a spate of recent books arrives...

Aug 11, 2017 — “Mrs. Fang is a study of a face and a sober essay on death,” writes Rory O’Connor at the Film Stage. “It’s also about fishing. As profoundly moving as it is troubling, this new masterwork from documentary filmmaker Wang Bing...

Jul 25, 2017 — Venice Days, “modeled on the prestigious Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Festival and promoted by the associations of Italian film directors and authors (Anac and 100autori),” has announced the lineup for its fourteenth edition, running from August 30 through September...

Jul 17, 2017 — “Steven Spielberg laid claim to the Normandy beach landing,” begins Variety’s Peter Debruge, “Clint Eastwood owns Iwo Jima, and now, Christopher Nolan has authored the definitive cinematic version of Dunkirk. Unlike those other battles, however, this last was not a...

May 25, 2017 — Emmanuel Gras’s Makala has won the Grand Prix at this year’s Critics’ Week Awards. “The Sisyphean task of making charcoal in the Congolese countryside and then carrying it in overstuffed bags on an overloaded bicycle to a city that’s a...

May 22, 2017 — Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer “makes the absurd, amazing The Lobster seem like a warm and cuddly experience by comparison,” declares Jessica Kiang at the Playlist. “A film of clean hands, cold heart, and near-Satanic horror, it...

May 27, 2015 — Costa-Gavras’s political drama sheds disturbing light on the violent methods used by governments to maintain order.

Aug 28, 2012 — A frenetic portrait of New York as well as a love story, Paul Fejos’s film captures the odd sensation of being alone in the big city, even when in a crowd.