A Flash of Light

Sep 23, 2002 — The theatricality of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller makes the point that psychoanalysis is a sister to cinema rather than a rival.

May 21, 2017 — Tonight, Sunday, May 21, 2017, Twin Peaks returns, just as Laura Palmer (may have) predicted it would twenty-five years ago, give or take. Eighteen one-hour episodes, all directed by David Lynch and cowritten with the show’s original co-creator, Mark Frost....

Jul 13, 2015 — “I think that in a few years, in ten, in twenty, or thirty years, we shall know whether Hiroshima mon amour was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema.” That was Eric Rohmer,...

Oct 24, 2025 — It is hard to conceive of a film more dazzlingly, dizzyingly divided against itself—or one more appropriately so—than this delirious creation of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and director Ken Russell.

May 16, 2025 — There’s a lot going on besides Cannes: Kira Muratova, Glauber Rocha, Mikio Naruse . . .

Feb 11, 2021 — The body never lies.Instead, it keeps score, with our very gestures and walk and physical eccentricities speaking to the traumas and desires we’d like to keep hidden. But there are some people so aware of this truth, and the power...

Feb 7, 2011 — Death looms over the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda. His first fiction feature, Maborosi (1995), is a quiet study of bereavement, about a young woman struggling to move on after her husband’s inexplicable suicide. In After Life (1998), a supernatural fable...

Oct 10, 2025 — This week: Essays on Daniel Day-Lewis, Sophie Fillières, and Miguel Gomes, a talk with Wes Anderson, and an AI experiment.

Mar 18, 2021 — The range this month is wide, from Tsai Ming-liang to Ida Lupino, from Tobe Hooper to Josephine Baker.

Nov 14, 2012 — Jean Luc Godard’s exuberant, multipronged attack on the bourgeoisie is both theater of the absurd and political horror.