The Text of Light

Oct 2, 2018 — Performances There’s an irreducible reserve about Kristen Stewart, an appearance of not doing much on-screen, that I mistook for lack of talent when I first saw her mumbling into her shirt in the Twilight franchise. Still, playing Bella Swan, chastity...

May 21, 2018 — W hether she’s pushing herself to new heights on stage and screen or nurturing her passions as a painter and poet, Juliette Binoche is as creatively voracious now as she’s ever been. Her combination of strength and disarming vulnerability as...

May 8, 2018 — Horror movies are often understood as products of the imagination, but in the case of Caroline Monnet and Daniel Watchorn’s work, the conventions of the genre are grounded in stories of real-life injustice. Set in a Canadian residential school for...

May 1, 2015 — In his first feature, Jean-Pierre Melville found subtly radical ways to adapt Vercors's underground French novel about quiet resistance against the German occupation.

Jun 10, 2025 — At MoMA, curator David Schwartz celebrates seventeen landmark New York screening venues.

Apr 29, 2025 — A black-and-white version of Julian Schnabel’s portrait of his fellow artist and friend Jean-Michel Basquiat accentuates the film’s melancholy mood while highlighting the deep commitment of Jeffrey Wright’s performance.

May 5, 2022 — Has Asian American cinematic representation really reached unprecedented heights, as almost all recent film coverage on the subject claims? In the past two years, critics’ polls, New York Times features, and Golden Globes scandals have marked the newfound success of...

Jul 13, 2021 — Critics assess new work from Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Paul Verhoeven, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, François Ozon, Joachim Trier, and more.

Jun 30, 2021 — A Twitter thread gone viral becomes a stylistically innovative comedy about race and extremely online culture.

Jan 20, 2021 — Knausgaard on Bergman and Adam Nayman on Armond White on Steven Spielberg are among this month’s highlights.