The little man

Oct 13, 2009 — This week marks the publication of Jonathan Lethem’s new novel, Chronic City, another captivating journey through mysterious New York with a host of peculiar characters (and a sci-fi twist), including a certain cinephile who finds his way into the offices of...

Sep 17, 2009 — Director René Clément had conveyed the darker aspects of human nature in 1952’s heartbreaking Forbidden Games, which became an international, award-winning hit despite the rawness and melancholy of its antiwar message. The bitter irony and willingness to grapple with the...

Jul 14, 2009 — Tough title to live up to. The lofty three-word phrase Al Reinert chose for his 1989 documentary on the Apollo space program comes from the plaque the first men on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, left there in...

May 11, 2009 — Novelists learn not to expect too much when their books are made into movies. Obviously, great fiction has been turned into great cinema, but the dents and scrapes that so many classics have sustained on the rocky road from the...

May 15, 2000 — Herk Harvey described to me a strange outdoor ballroom he had seen rotting on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. . . and said he’d like to make a film about creatures rising from the lake and doing a...

Feb 3, 2025 — The vibe in Park City was unsettling, but critics and juries discovered plenty of films to fall for.

Nov 30, 2023 — A retrospective in New York offers an opportunity to delve into Yoshida’s views on the work of early masters such as Kurosawa and Ozu.

Sep 28, 2022 — A long-obscure landmark of the Iranian New Wave, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s daringly ambiguous portrait of feudalism’s demise mirrors the revolutionary times in which it was made.

Mar 4, 2021 — Andreas Fontana’s Azor and Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s The Girl and the Spider are competing in the Encounters program at the Berlinale.

Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.