Look for a Star

Feb 9, 2017 — Repertory PicksStarting tomorrow, New York’s Japan Society will host a weekend-long celebration of actor Meiko Kaji, whose vigorous performances as outlaw women made her one of Japan’s biggest stars in the sixties and seventies. On Saturday, you can see her...

Oct 26, 2010 — A coming-of-age story about a clique of teenage schoolgirls who will never grow old and a demon spirit in the guise of a spinster who was never young, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s eye-poppingly demented, jaw-droppingly inventive House is 1970s Japanese pop culture...

Feb 20, 2026 — Since the 1980s, Indigenous artists have turned to documentary filmmaking and a variety of experimental forms to reassert their cultural sovereignty and lay claim to their own narratives.

Mar 13, 2025 — While a film’s stars are forced to bear the responsibility of moving a narrative forward, supporting actors get to have fun providing comic relief or suggesting whole lives being lived beyond the screen.

Jun 24, 2014 — In 1964, Richard Lester harnessed the Beatles’ exploding superstardom for a giddy day-in-the-life pop masterpiece.

May 13, 2024 — Among this month’s highlights are a bustling summer barbecue of amply peopled movies full of unforgettable performances, a collection of films with great synth soundtracks, and Adventures in Moviegoing with Paul Schrader.

Apr 13, 2021 — To fall deeply in love means to take a risk, and no romantic movie is riskier than History Is Made at Night (1937). Producer Walter Wanger came up with the very grand and suggestive title, but he had only two...

Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...

Jan 19, 2021 — In the summer of 1976, my parents took me to see the tall ships in New York Harbor. I was ten, and I remember very little about it other than that I went and that the ships, tall, did not...

Nov 6, 2020 — A new restoration of Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk, the return of Sophia Loren, supercops in the 1970s, and Costa-Gavras’s Z are on our minds this week.