If I Were for Real

May 23, 2017 — “To premiere one film at Cannes is an honor,” writes Nicolas Rapold in the New York Times. “Being granted two slots in the lineup is a major distinction indeed. But for the prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo, the two...

Mar 17, 2008 — During the Second World War, when Hiroshi Teshigahara was a schoolboy, Japan’s cities—above all his hometown, Tokyo—were mercilessly firebombed. He, and his future associates in countless artistic undertakings, returned to a landscape of bleak ruins. The adolescent Hiroshi was particularly...

Jan 16, 2007 — The marvel of Mouchette inheres in the elegance, obstinacy, and capaciousness of Bresson’s double-mindedness.

May 13, 2014 — Few national cinemas have confronted the issue of preparedness for war with the creative vigor of England’s. Thorold Dickinson’s The Next of Kin (1942), Alberto Cavalcanti’s Went the Day Well? (1942, from a story by Graham Greene), and, of course,...

Aug 25, 2026 — A queer couple in Kyiv is already working through a personal crisis when Russia invades their country.

May 12, 2026 — Sorting through critics’ most-anticipated titles, catching up with interviews and profiles, and more.

Mar 13, 2025 — While a film’s stars are forced to bear the responsibility of moving a narrative forward, supporting actors get to have fun providing comic relief or suggesting whole lives being lived beyond the screen.

Feb 13, 2024 — Through its echoes, resonances, and intricately branching stories, this cycle of films evokes the feeling that life, like the weather, is based on patterns too complex to ever be fully predictable.

Apr 15, 2019 — She was known as “a professional innocent”—until Persona (1966) revealed a complex emotional intelligence.

Aug 17, 2017 — “My first job out of UCLA Film School, at age twenty-two, was directing second unit on The Night of the Hunter for Charles Laughton.” So begins a collection of memories, pre-production sketches, and screenplay pages at the Talkhouse Film from...