Ran

Aug 24, 2020 — In memory of D. A. Pennebaker (1925–2019) 1. The great documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker was motivated to shoot by curiosity. He loved music and friendship, and he had an understanding that everything he filmed recorded histories both personal and...

Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda In September 2018, I screened Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places for the Michigan State University Film Collective. We had a lively discussion that went past the scheduled ending time. As I was getting...

Aug 7, 2020 — This week we’re reading about Setsuko Hara, Satyajit Ray, Buster Keaton, Rita Azevedo Gomes, and Beyoncé.

Aug 3, 2020 — The British director of sprightly musicals, wrenching family dramas, and gripping political thrillers was seventy-six.

Jul 24, 2020 — On our minds this week: Bruce Lee’s legacy, Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopia, Hitchcock’s hands, and those Black Lives Matter movie lists.

Jul 14, 2020 — We’d hoped to be making and watching movies in theaters again by now. That’s not happening, so now what?

Jul 10, 2020 — This week’s highlights come in pairs: Bill and Turner Ross, Michaela Coel and Thandie Newton, Bradford Young and Ava DuVernay, and more.

Jul 7, 2020 — The renowned composer of well over four hundred film scores was equally at home in avant experimentation and tear-jerking sentimentality.

Jun 16, 2020 — Buster Keaton’s last great film, The Cameraman (1928), is his love letter to the machine that makes movies possible. He plays a humble street photographer who is smitten with a pretty secretary and follows her back to the newsreel office...

May 21, 2020 — Judy O’Brien, a ballerina working in a burlesque show to make ends meet, has finally had enough. In the middle of an especially humiliating performance, the audience’s jeering reaches such a peak that she stops, walks down center stage, hands...