As director

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....

Apr 7, 2020 — How a festival responds to this crisis says a lot about how it perceives its role.

Sep 30, 2019 — Critics are enthralled by a mobster’s three-and-a-half-hour alternative history of the mid-twentieth century.

Aug 31, 2018 — And a pillar of American film criticism falls.

Mar 30, 2018 — New York. “Today’s manliest movie stars—mostly buffed-up superheroes like your Chrises Hemsworth, Pratt, and Evans—are scientifically enlarged and formed by state-of-the-art training and diet regimens,” writes Vern in the Village Voice. “Guys like Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and...

Dec 18, 2017 — The new Winter 2017 issue of Cineaste is out and the highlight of what’s online would have to be the interviews, four complete “Web Exclusives.” Dennis West and Joan M. West talk with documentarian Pamela Yates about completing her Guatemalan...

May 20, 2017 — “The film industry is full of unassuming figures quietly holding everything together without ever demanding a share of the limelight,” begins Gwilym Mumford in the Guardian. Filmworker, a “tender documentary” premiering in the Cannes Classics program, “makes time to profile...

Sep 21, 2016 — An exhilarating blend of noir and splatter-flick tropes, the Coen brothers’ debut feature established their unique brand of cosmic fatalism.

Jan 19, 2016 — Inside Llewyn Davis takes its protagonist on a Hero’s Journey of characteristically Coen-esque proportions—a voyage at turns serious and comic, and framed by an exquisitely curated selection of folk melodies.

Jun 17, 2013 — The author introduces a new Current series that will feature his reminiscences about his encounters in international cinema circles over the past five-plus decades.