Life Track

Jul 26, 2017 — “The rarely screened Le gai savoir (1969), translated as ‘Joy of Knowing’ in the 2K restoration that makes its world premiere at the Quad on Friday, exemplifies a typical Godardian paradox,” writes Melissa Anderson in the Village Voice. “Profuse and...

Jul 25, 2017 — “So,” wrote Chris Marker in 2003, looking back on his school days, “with scissors, glue and crystal paper, I made a faithful copy of the actual Pathéorama reel. After that, frame by frame, I began to draw a series of...

Jul 24, 2017 — “It seems, at first, like an impossible caper,” begins Jordan Hoffman, writing for the Guardian. “Can Steven Soderbergh bring something new to the heist genre after his outstanding Oceans trilogy? The answer, as always, is to have faith in the...

Jul 17, 2017 — “Steven Spielberg laid claim to the Normandy beach landing,” begins Variety’s Peter Debruge, “Clint Eastwood owns Iwo Jima, and now, Christopher Nolan has authored the definitive cinematic version of Dunkirk. Unlike those other battles, however, this last was not a...

Jul 11, 2017 — A forged note brings chaos and corruption to the lives of everyone it touches in Robert Bresson’s devastating final film.

Jun 27, 2017 — Let’s break the pattern a bit and open today’s entry with the recommended listening first. Karina Longworth’s outstanding podcast You Must Remember This has just returned from a well-deserved hiatus with a new series, “Jean and Jane.” As in Seberg...

Jun 21, 2017 — Those lists of twenty-five best films of the twenty-first century (so far) keep coming, and J. Hoberman’s now posted his, too. He’s customized the rules somewhat, and we can be glad: “My single ‘best’ film-object”—Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010)—“is followed...

Jun 21, 2017 — Billing itself as “the world's longest continually-running film festival,” the Edinburgh International Film Festival opens its 71st edition today with Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country, one of five films Alistair Harkness recommends from the lineup in the Scotsman: “Already described...

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...

May 30, 2017 — Now that the Cannes Film Festival has wrapped, we’ve got some catching up to do. Let’s begin with Scout Tafoya’s report for the Village Voice on a recent symposium “on film criticism and scholarship commemorating the legacy of German film...