The Almost Man

Nov 17, 2020 — Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner is having quite the year, with the rapturous reception of his work on Steve McQueen’s Small Axe films, which played at New York Film Festival and will launch on Amazon this Friday. Prior to this breakthrough, he’s...

Feb 12, 2019 — In a stark, forbidding prison, a nun ascends a staircase, framed by vertical bars, and walks down a corridor, unlocking cell doors. Women start coming out; two of them quarrel. Smoking on her bunk, one inmate sighs when told she...

Jan 9, 2017 — Since its inception more than a half-century ago, the National Society of Film Critics has maintained its reputation for championing idiosyncratic and independent voices during the commercially driven awards season, with past best picture awards going to films like Michelangelo...

Nov 28, 2016 — PerformancesAny paean to noir seductress nonpareil Gloria Grahame—mine included—can’t hope to surpass this encomium from Boyd McDonald, one of her most ardent and articulate devotees. Saluting Grahame’s performance in In a Lonely Place (1950) in his essential 1985 compendium, Cruising...

Mar 24, 2015 — Words—they conceal and reveal so much about us, as Errol Morris’s elusive and brilliant first films attest.

Feb 17, 2014 — Flailing fathers, anxious mothers, and their moody offspring—these characters may have tails, but they’re Wes Anderson people through and through.

Jul 21, 2008 — Carl Theodor Dreyer’s elliptical and dreamlike vampire film defies definitive shots at interpretation.

Jun 23, 2003 — Ermanno Olmi’s seldom-cited debut feature, the 1958 Time Stood Still, is a wonderful film, but it was the one-two punch of his second and third films that put him on the international movie scene map. Il Posto and I Fidanzati...

Jan 13, 2025 — Toronto’s retrospective showcases an oeuvre that ranges from Fists in the Pocket (1965) to Kidnapped (2023).

Sep 29, 2023 — The week brings conversations with Hal Hartley, Todd Haynes, Christine Vachon, Pedro Costa, Wang Bing, and Rita Azevedo Gomes.