This Our Life

Feb 1, 1988 — Charles Laughton’s classic has the feel and the force of an American folk fable; yet, it also mixes rural humor with gothic humor, biblical quotation and Freudian symbolism, and everyday realities with a near-mythic confrontation between the forces of good...

Dec 1, 1986 — Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is one cult film that has also won over the cultivated buff. As Peter Morris remarks (in his Dictionary of Films): “Though one of the subtlest films of the genre, containing little...

Dec 3, 1984 — Since the dawn of the sound era, an estimated 25,000 feature-length films have been produced—and that’s in the English language alone. When, in the early 1960s, an international group of film critics were polled as to their “number-one film of...

Mar 10, 2003 — The Swedish director of I Am Curious explains how he fused the themes of eroticism, self-exploration, voyeurism, and nonviolence into a film about the new freedoms of the young. QUESTION: I Am Curious seemed to be a cinematic Tristram Shandy,...

Apr 1, 2023 — This week: Heart-stopping stunts from Harold Lloyd and Michelle Yeoh plus writing on Dziga Vertov and Kenji Mizoguchi.

Aug 26, 2022 — Louise Brooks, Marguerite Duras, Lucrecia Martel, and Jacquelyn Mills headline this week’s roundup.

Oct 1, 2021 — This week we’re celebrating Haile Gerima, reading the new Cinema Scope, and listening to Julie Delpy.

Aug 27, 2021 — This week we’re delving into the history of Black cinema and reflecting on films from Afghanistan and Iran.

Nov 22, 2018 — Family movies, Wellesian moments, and the female gaze are among this week’s highlights.

Apr 14, 2017 — Did You See This? The just-announced 2017 Cannes Film Festival lineup is a wealth of riches, with new work from Arnaud Desplechin, Abbas Kiarostami, Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Noah Baumbach, and Lynne Ramsay, plus a mystery-shrouded Twin Peaks revival. Bright...