† This is the Life

Aug 29, 2017 — We’re “in dire need of revolutionary narratives,” writes Dan Hassler-Forest. And he grants that a few Hollywood blockbusters have made a stab at it, specifically calling out The Hunger Games, Rogue One, and Mad Max: Fury Road. “But Hollywood’s most...

Aug 11, 2017 — With his controversial new film Nocturama opening in theaters, French director Bertrand Bonello spoke with us about what inspires him as an artist and how he blurs the line between realism and abstraction.

Jul 11, 2017 — Let’s begin today with the listening and viewing tips, because New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis is Peter Labuza’s guest on The Cinephiliacs (85’38”). Among the topics discussed are “her childhood movie love of watching objects without inhibition and...

Jun 30, 2017 — Jonathan Rosenbaum’s posted a revised version of his 1999 essay on the “Origins and Legacy of the Conspiracy Thriller”: “It’s a tradition that harks back to Louis Feuillade’s silent serial of 1915-1916, Les vampires, about a gang of ingenious working-class...

May 18, 2017 — Before turning to events happening in various cities, let’s note that the Seventh Art Stand carries on through the end of the month. It’s “a nationwide screening and discussion series presented by 50+ theaters, museums, and community centers in more...

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

Sep 2, 2016 — Returning for its first theatrical run in fifteen years, this ten-part meditation on the Ten Commandments centers on the residents of a housing complex in late-Communist Poland, charting the moral and philosophical dilemmas that arise as their lives intersect.

Oct 21, 2015 — Masaki Kobayashi takes on broken vows and the unreality of the past in his sensual and spooky four-part adaptation of Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese folktales.

Sep 23, 2015 — Bruce Beresford draws on a controversial episode of Australian colonial history from 1901 to create an electrifying drama that questions the moral certitude of war.

Jun 29, 2015 — This work of hallucinatory lyricism was one of the final and freest expressions of the rule-flouting New Wave movement in Czechoslovakia.