Center Stage

May 22, 2019 — Most critics won’t allow a comically absurd premise or a convoluted plot stand in the way of a good time.

May 6, 2019 — Greta Garbo, Anita Loos, Ernst Lubitsch, Ben Hecht, and Salka Viertel cross paths in this month’s round.

Apr 2, 2019 — Mike Leigh’s endless fascination with human behavior is palpable in every one of the films he’s made over the course of his nearly fifty-year career. With an acute sensitivity to rhythm, character, and setting, he extracts extraordinary moments from the...

Mar 27, 2019 — Twenty-four features by some of the world’s most promising directors are screening in New York through April 7.

Mar 25, 2019 — The writer, producer, and director packed trenchant satire into his genre-hopping B-movies.

Mar 21, 2019 — “The world is full of skeptics,” Detour’s Al Roberts struggles to explain, in voice-over, while on-screen we’re pondering Vera’s dead body. “I know. I’m one myself . . .”Even now, closing in on seventy-five years after the Producers Releasing Corporation...

Feb 6, 2019 — Ten forward-looking features and a few intriguing revivals will screen from today through Sunday in New York.

Jan 24, 2019 — Avant-garde cinema’s greatest champion—and one of its most accomplished practitioners—has died at ninety-six.

Jan 8, 2019 — “Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated” is how Abbas Kiarostami once described his late turn toward minimalism. While the Iranian director was known for the intricate, metatextual playfulness of his work, he also spent much of his career...

Nov 19, 2018 — Billy Wilder proves himself one of cinema’s greatest pleasure seekers in this irresistible confection, a landmark of Hollywood comedy.