The Imp

Nov 17, 2020 — Consider Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) as a very promiscuous romance picture above anything else—even if not all of its many objects of affection are what you might call properly human and there is no...

Jun 8, 2020 — A patient and observant analyst of films and their stars, the playwright and critic has passed away. He was ninety.

May 26, 2020 — Karina Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember This returns with a season devoted to the unjustly unheralded producer, production designer, and writer.

May 4, 2020 — A new 976-page biography delves into the life and work of an ultimately unknowable man.

Apr 13, 2020 — The director of House, dozens of experimental films, and thousands of commercials returned again and again to the devastation of the Second World War.

Apr 3, 2020 — Conversations with Frederick Wiseman and Quentin Tarantino and rediscoveries of forgotten critics and an Arab filmmaker are among this week’s highlights.

Dec 10, 2019 — Rock music, as director Wim Wenders once joked in an interview, offered to him and other Germans of his generation the “only alternative to Beethoven.” There is likely as much truth as hyper­­bole in the statement; considering the role that...

Nov 29, 2019 — The BBC polls 368 critics and programmers to come up with a list of the greatest films directed by women—plus more of the best of the 2010s and 2019.

Oct 18, 2019 — An intriguing paradox lies at the heart of Errol Morris’s body of work: while his films are driven by a relentless pursuit of knowledge and facts, they ultimately reveal cinema’s inability to capture a definitive version of reality. It’s this...

Oct 16, 2019 — Deep Dives “I have a feeling that the really crucial moments in a film should be wordless,” the Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray once said. He was speaking of his 1964 masterpiece Charulata, whose action consists largely of soulful looks passing...