The Way of the Househusband: The Cinema

Feb 25, 2019 — Songbook Pace Lou Reed, nobody’s life is saved by rock and roll in Cold Water. This in spite of  its young characters’ relentless pursuit of it, in both musical and metaphysical forms. Made in 1994, set in 1972, Olivier Assayas’s...

Dec 11, 2018 — Note: The terms black and white were part of the way racial categories were referred to in South Africa under apartheid. Other terms, like nonwhite and non-European, were also used to mark racial segregation. In the following essay, the term...

Jul 17, 2018 — Without doubt, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape struck a nerve when it was released in 1989. Astonishingly, it still does today. Among the most storied of American independent films, it debuted at the U.S. Film Festival (soon to be renamed the...

Mar 20, 2018 — For the London Review of Books, Gaby Wood writes about Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) and the 1947 novel it’s based on by Dorothy B. Hughes. “When filming began, Ray was married to its female lead, Gloria Grahame;...

Feb 1, 2018 — G. W. Pabst’s breathlessly paced reimagining of a mine disaster makes an urgent plea for international cooperation in the post–World War I era.

Jan 21, 2018 — “In a festival that rarely wants for political currency,” writes Justin Chang in a dispatch from Sundance to the Los Angeles Times, “it’s surely no coincidence that Blindspotting and Monsters and Men, the first two films to screen in this...

Jan 19, 2018 — “With issues of women’s equality, sexual misconduct, and political turmoil heavy on the movie world’s mind, Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper said he wanted to start the 2018 edition with a movie that’s ‘fun to the point of sassy,’”...

Dec 12, 2017 — Alexander Payne skewers the absurdities of American politics in this tale of a high-school presidential campaign gone ugly.

Oct 5, 2017 — This is the documentary that put an end to Steven Spielberg’s plans to produce a narrative feature—to be directed by Sam Mendes—based on Gay Talese’s book, The Voyeur’s Motel. Spielberg had bought the rights after the New Yorker ran an...

Sep 28, 2017 — “If you’ve never seen The Last Detail, Hal Ashby’s 1973 comedy-drama about three Navy sailors on a debauched and ultimately tragic road trip, there are several reasons to rectify that,” begins Dana Stevens at Slate. “There’s a devilishly charismatic performance...