As It Is In Life

Mar 17, 2020 — Released in, or rather let loose upon, the first year of the new millennium, Spike Lee’s febrile and ferocious media satire Bamboozled—the fifteenth feature-length “joint” of a prolific career—found its writer-director in an unflinching mode and an unforgiving mood. According...

Feb 18, 2020 — From the making of Chinatown, through fresh memoirs and ongoing biographies, here’s this month’s overview of new and noteworthy titles.

Feb 14, 2020 — Featured this week are a letter from Hollis Frampton, a new issue of photogénie, a talk with Charles Burnett, and more.

Feb 10, 2020 — The ragman’s son became one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, working most memorably with Wilder, Minnelli, and Kubrick.

Feb 3, 2020 — Nearly half of the awards presented over the weekend went to female filmmakers.

Dec 11, 2019 — One Scene “Who can prove the genuineness of our feelings?” a character asks at one point in the Cannes-award-winning sci-fi drama Little Joe, the first English-language film by Austrian director Jessica Hausner. The question is as good a summation as...

Sep 17, 2019 — Fusing the melodrama of Douglas Sirk and the ballyhoo of William Castle, John Waters’ sixth feature, Polyester (1981), was a departure from the scrofulous 16 mm mode of production he had made his cult name plying to midnight-movie crowds in...

Sep 4, 2019 — With their novelistic density and sexual openness, the films of French master André Téchiné introduced director Stephen Cone to a strange new world of contradictions.

Jul 11, 2019 — The accomplished actor could be “compellingly loathsome,” a “titan” of comedy, and “unexpectedly moving.”

Jul 1, 2019 — Truffaut, Melville, and Jean Epstein open this month’s round of reviews and discussions of the latest noteworthy publications.