Second Act

Jul 17, 2018 — Without doubt, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape struck a nerve when it was released in 1989. Astonishingly, it still does today. Among the most storied of American independent films, it debuted at the U.S. Film Festival (soon to be renamed the...

Dec 15, 2017 — The International Film Festival Rotterdam has been rolling out the lineup for its 2018 edition (January 24 through February 4) in quick spurts over the past few weeks, and it’s far from complete. But there’s already more than enough to...

Oct 8, 2017 — Hong Sang-soo’s On the Beach at Night Alone “is a drama of rare lyrical exaltation,” writes the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. “Kim Min-hee stars as an actress named Young-hee, whose life has been thrown into turmoil by reports about her...

Oct 6, 2017 — “After a number of impressive short films and one documentary hybrid feature, the 2013 Tonight and the People, French artist Neïl Beloufa offers Occidental, the closest he’s yet come to a conventional feature film,” begins Michael Sicinski, writing for Cinema...

Jul 23, 2017 — “Exploding across the stressed out summer of 2017 like a powder keg thrown into a room that’s already on fire, Kathryn Bigelow’s hectic but harrowing docudrama account of the 1967 Detroit riots is inevitably as concerned with the persistence of...

Jul 17, 2017 — We begin this round in the UK because, starting Friday, Park Circus is putting Basil Dearden’s Victim (1961) back in theaters, “marking 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 initiated a major development of the country's human rights legislation...

May 31, 2017 — Long difficult to see, this transgressive silent masterpiece draws on a wide range of aesthetic influences to push against the boundaries of film form.

Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.

Jun 17, 2015 — Taking the form of a casual conversation, Louis Malle’s film about transformative experiences is an outgrowth of its writer-stars’ experimental theater days.

Mar 9, 2012 — The cinematographer tells us how he and Louis Malle went about shooting Vanya on 42nd Street in a decrepit Manhattan theater.