The Circle

Jan 10, 2025 — This week: Eisenstein’s diaries, Godard’s artworks, Mike Leigh’s characters, and Sidney Poitier’s late work.

Dec 4, 2024 — Before she won acclaim as a pioneering director, the Hollywood icon made her name as a powerfully vivid actor who brought grit and toughness to films by such masters as Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Michael Curtiz.

Aug 27, 2024 — A brilliant satire, inspired by a 1973 PBS documentary series that gave rise to the reality-television genre, Albert Brooks’s first feature film examines the ethical dilemmas of combining cheap entertainment and sociological experiment.

Dec 22, 2023 — An appreciation of Raúl Ruiz, a chat with Maggie Renzi and John Sayles, and a holiday lightning round.

Dec 6, 2021 — It was a good weekend for Drive My Car, Lady Gaga, and Aleem Khan’s debut feature.

Dec 3, 2017 — This past Thursday, the New York Film Critics Circle presented its round of awards, and now the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, founded in 1975, wraps the weekend by voting up its choices.Best Picture: Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your...

Jun 5, 2017 — Catherine Grant points us to the new issue of the open access journal Film-Philosophy. Before we begin paging through it, let’s have a look at a piece by Benjamin Crais which the Notebook ran last December:For Anglophone readers, Jean Louis...

Jul 2, 2015 — By recounting the impossibility of making a movie, Federico Fellini ended up creating a masterpiece that almost fell into his lap.

Nov 8, 2011 — Aflurry of publicity around Fanny and Alexander began well before the start of production. Ingmar Bergman said it would be his final film, and he allowed unusual media access to the set, even welcoming a pair of journalists who kept...

Dec 13, 2006 — Well, it’s not exactly writer’s block, but it’s related. I’ve been trying to get this blog entry posted since Tuesday afternoon, but there’s always something that takes me away from the task at hand. I’m procrastinating, and I know why:...