To Be and to Have

Oct 24, 2005 — The hero in Masahiro Shinoda’s popular samurai movie is both a genre figure and an ordinary character, both killer and savior, both larger than life and lost in the mists.

Oct 23, 2026 — In the 1970s, up-and-coming mavericks like Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter honed their craft by bringing a taste of the grindhouse to the small screen.

Sep 28, 2026 — Anchored by an extraordinary performance from Sandrine Bonnaire, the epic historical drama Joan the Maid strips away its saintly protagonist’s mythic aura and gives us a humbler, more intimate version of her life story.

Sep 22, 2026 — In this exhilarating account of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Richard Linklater lovingly reconstructs the vanished world of late-fifties Paris and the cinephilic culture surrounding the French New Wave.

Aug 7, 2026 — This week: Conversations with Jane Schoenbrun, Ngozi Onwurah, and Kent Jones and writing on Jean Epstein and Stanley Kwan.

Jun 26, 2026 — We’re tracking the unconventional flows of Zidane, Eephus, and Castration Movie; plus Pedro Costa on Mizoguchi and Tourneur.

Jun 1, 2026 — The world’s most desolate film festival expands to nearly a hundred theaters in seventy-three cities.

Feb 24, 2026 — For this existential noir, Joel and Ethan Coen drew inspiration from crime-fiction master James M. Cain’s lean, hard-boiled style and interest in the quotidian world of work.

Feb 10, 2026 — The renowned distributor of nearly six thousand films, videos, and media artworks turns sixty-five.

Jan 26, 2026 — The new year brings an ode to Judy Garland, conversations with Martin Scorsese, and a novel by John Sayles.