The Swimming Pool

Dec 2, 2025 — In a string of short films he made in the 1920s, Man Ray brought a restlessly inventive spirit to a young medium, pushing the boundaries of cinematic form with frenetic editing, abstract imagery, and surrealist camera tricks.

Sep 29, 2017 — New York. The big event in town is, of course, the New York Film Festival, which gets going in earnest today following last night’s premiere of Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying. At the top of the NYFF 2017 Index, I’ve linked to an interview with festival director Kent...

Jun 16, 2017 — The title of the first part of Tom Paulus’s projected three-part essay for photogénie, “The Love Connection: Another Jam Session on Narrative,” references “Jam Session on Non-Narrative,” a conversation that took place between film critics Jonathan Rosenbaum, David Ehrenstein, and...

Sep 20, 2016 — Cloaked in chiaroscuro and innuendo, this stylistically innovative creature feature leaves its greatest horrors to the imagination.

Feb 5, 2010 — Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (Knopf) begins with an epigram that pretty well sums up Altman’s attitude toward “truth” and “realism” in cinema and life. “I don’t think anybody remembers the truth, the facts,” the great filmmaker said. “You remember...

Jun 14, 2017 — A tireless explorer of cinema’s discarded past, Bill Morrison brings his unique approach to found-footage filmmaking to his latest project, a documentary about lost reels of nitrate film found in Canada’s Yukon Territory.

Feb 1, 1999 — After finishing Diabolique, heralded French director-screenwriter Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907–1977) confessed that all he had intended was to make a picture that would “amuse myself” and please a young girl who hid under the covers and asked her father to frighten...

Feb 23, 2016 — Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution.

Jul 13, 2021 — Critics assess new work from Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Paul Verhoeven, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, François Ozon, Joachim Trier, and more.

Apr 2, 2021 — More mysteries from Rian Johnson plus notes on forthcoming films from Steven Spielberg, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Alma Har’el, and more.