In the Mirror

Jan 12, 2021 — In the course of selling or promoting a film, a director will invariably be asked, “What’s this movie really about?” The desired answer is usually predetermined—marketers want a concise, two-sentence hook; reporters want a sound bite; critics want a thesis...

Jun 28, 2016 — When Stanley Kubrick bought the motion picture rights to the 1958 thriller Red Alert, by the retired Royal Air Force navigator Peter George, he meant to direct an action film about a nuclear war triggered by a solitary madman. Some...

Jan 10, 2005 — Seijun Suzuki made a breakthrough with his second feature, a yakuza thriller full of devil-may-care assurance and try-anything imagination.

Nov 12, 2024 — Innovative metafictions and fresh readings of classic novels arrive along with books on Robert Kramer, Terrence Malick, and Nora Ephron.

Aug 25, 2023 — This week brings restorations of work by Kira Muratova, a personal story from Werner Herzog, and conversations with Kim Morgan and Dustin Guy Defa.

Feb 20, 2018 — In this wildly inventive revenge drama, director Kon Ichikawa blurs the line between stage and screen, infusing kabuki traditions with his own extravagant visual sensibility.

Jul 15, 2014 — Among the brainiest of all horror movies, David Cronenberg’s film goes beyond shock to investigate a disturbing world of psychic mutation.

Aug 25, 2020 — Set among immigrants and laborers in an unglamorous corner of the South of France, Toni (1935) fulfills Jean Renoir’s wish to make a film in “a style as close as possible to that of daily encounters,” as he wrote in...

Oct 21, 2019 — Songbook If you weren’t a devotee of the Cantopop world in the early 1990s, the casting of Faye Wong in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) may not have caught your attention. Starring in her first major role, the singer looked...

Feb 11, 2015 — Filmmaker Kogonada, with a little help from Sylvia Plath, reflects on women and mirrors in the films of Ingmar Bergman.