My Hero

Mar 12, 2018 — When the SXSW Film Festival presented the world premiere of Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One last night, “technical difficulties KO’ed the sound for the second time in a row, bringing the dizzying, VFX-fueled video game adventure to a grinding halt...

Mar 5, 2018 — Along with 132 short films and a slew of masterclasses, installations, discussions, and other events, the Berlin International Film Festival presented 253 features this year. I managed to catch twenty-seven of them, and Adina Pintilie’s Touch Me Not, winner of...

Mar 1, 2018 — “His face did something to me. Or, rather, the film, with its compassion and its utterly jarring ending, which I won’t give away, did something to me. But, then again, you could also say that, in some sense, the film...

Feb 28, 2018 — A few days ago, we ran an essay here by Pico Iyer on Satyajit Ray’s The Hero (1966), followed by Meheli Sen’s comments on Uttam Kumar’s performance within the context of his stardom. Iyer has more to say and, writing...

Feb 27, 2018 — Director Tony Richardson refracts the bawdy spirit of the 1960s through this brilliantly distilled take on an eighteenth-century picaresque.

Feb 14, 2018 — With her acclaimed new film Western opening in theaters this week, we spoke with German director Valeska Grisebach on the romantic ideals of the quintessential American genre.

Feb 7, 2018 — Last week, the SXSW Film Festival presented 132 features lined up for its 2018 edition running from March 9 through 18. Today, the festival announces that Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs will be this year’s Closing Night Film—and it’s added...

Feb 6, 2018 — “A jolt of a movie, Black Panther creates wonder with great flair and feeling partly through something Hollywood rarely dreams of anymore: myth.” So begins Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “Most big studio fantasies take you out for...

Jan 20, 2018 — “Twenty years ago,” begins Variety’s Peter Debruge, “Robin Williams approached director Gus Van Sant about developing irreverent Portland cartoonist John Callahan’s memoir, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, with the intention of playing its author—a quadriplegic skirt-chaser, wheelchair...

Jan 19, 2018 — Two marvels of midcentury social commentary now streaming on the Criterion Channel show how progress can be a one-step-forward, two-steps-backward process.