The First World War

Dec 9, 2018 — Songbook The final scene of Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville belongs to the transient wannabe singer Albuquerque, played by the late Barbara Harris. Up to that point, the storyline has followed numerous musician characters who are striving to get discovered or bolster...

Dec 7, 2018 — Christian Petzold’s films are like dances in which people circle each other but never quite connect. The most resonant moments in the German writer-director’s work are not ones of dialogue or plot development but of blocking and choreography: bodies intertwining,...

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.

Dec 10, 2014 — Social satire, women’s melodrama, queer metaphor, or horror movie? Todd Haynes’s elusive masterpiece is all of these and none of them.

Jul 17, 2014 — When I was in high school in the late ’70s, one of my closest pals was a semiprofessional magician. A top-flight pianist as well, Charles was making some tidy sums as an entertainer in restaurants and clubs around North Jersey...

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.

Sep 18, 2013 — This chapter about director Richard Linklater’s beginnings, from the 1996 book Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema, is by the former producer’s representative, creator and host of IFC’s Split Screen, and...

May 28, 2013 — Mike Leigh’s breakthrough is a funny film about serious things, and an emotional and slyly political take on consumer culture.

Dec 12, 2012 — Even with limited resources, Christopher Nolan proved a force to be reckoned with in his thrilling, auspicious debut.