Life

Sep 22, 2020 — Francesco Rosi’s film Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) is based on Carlo Levi’s novelistic memoir of the same name, which became an instant classic of Italian literature when it appeared at the end of World War II, in 1945. In...

Sep 18, 2020 — The late scholar Robert Bird’s final essay on Tarkovsky and fresh writing on Béla Tarr, Eric Rohmer, and more are among this week’s highlights.

Sep 16, 2020 — When I think of Albert Brooks, the first image that invariably comes to mind is that of a worry-stricken man desperately impressing his anxieties upon a bemused, notably less nebbishy partner, presenting an elaborate case for the legitimacy of those...

Sep 15, 2020 — For some, this nineteenth-century love story “never catches fire,” but for others, it’s “one of the finest films of the year.”

Sep 15, 2020 — When Claire Denis’s Beau travail (1999) first appeared on American screens, the critic Stephen Holden used a striking phrase to capture its embracing of bold opposites: “voluptuous austerity.” His characterization, widely quoted since, illuminates the film on many levels, and...

Sep 14, 2020 — Golden Lion for Chloé Zhao! Plus a look at what the critics have to say about all the award winners.

Sep 11, 2020 — On our minds this week: New Taiwan Cinema of the 1980s, Black cinema’s “paradoxical role in American cultural history,” the new Brooklyn Rail, and more.

Sep 11, 2020 — As Toronto opens, here’s an overview of early critical response to some of the festival’s titles arriving directly from their premieres in Venice.

Sep 10, 2020 — In this in-depth interview, the legendary photographer and filmmaker explains how a lifetime of compulsive movie-watching has influenced her artistic practice.

Sep 9, 2020 — Performances In the mid-1960s, the Bengali director Mrinal Sen reportedly accused his contemporary Satyajit Ray of selling out. “Mrinal said—now he has sunk to the level of using a matinee idol!” Ray would later laugh to his biographer, Andrew Robinson....