The Man Who Left His Will on Film

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

Jul 17, 2014 — When I was in high school in the late ’70s, one of my closest pals was a semiprofessional magician. A top-flight pianist as well, Charles was making some tidy sums as an entertainer in restaurants and clubs around North Jersey...

Feb 20, 2011 — Melodrama has a bad reputation because it has been abandoned to schematic and conventional interpretation. —Luchino ViscontiSenso, Luchino Visconti’s extraordinarily lush 1954 movie, was never truly released in America. Even though an American star, Farley Granger, and a European star,...

Jan 24, 2022 — Two new books on the wildly inventive comedian and filmmaker make a complementary pair.

Nov 29, 2021 — The composer and lyricist who reinvented the American musical was “more of a film buff than a theater buff.”

Nov 15, 2018 — In two made-for-television productions, a middle-aged Ingmar Bergman blurred the boundaries between screen and stage.

May 4, 2018 — What do we mean when we say a narrative film is poetic? The answer lies in this visionary western from director Jim Jarmusch.

Oct 4, 2016 — This account of a visit to the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls set is excerpted from an issue of the University of California, Los Angeles, newspaper.

Aug 27, 2025 — The summer’s been terrific for new movie magazines and filmmaker biographies.

Apr 15, 2025 — This year’s edition features Laura Wandel’s follow-up to Playground and the first feature from Sean Baker collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou.