The Longing

Feb 19, 2025 — Gus Van Sant’s lyrical exploration of addiction and faith—adapted from an autobiographical novel by James Fogle—influenced cinematic drug depictions throughout the nineties and helped to initiate a wave of American independent filmmaking.

Oct 23, 2024 — This month brings new books on Brian De Palma, Tobe Hooper, unhappy writers, and classic documentaries.

Aug 12, 2024 — The great actor creates an unforgettable portrait of a man worn down by the world in Tamara Jenkins’s darkly funny and deeply moving family drama.

Jun 20, 2024 — She was Demy’s Lola, Fellini’s Luisa, and in Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, Trintignant’s lover.

Jan 17, 2024 — Steven Soderbergh contemplates writing his first novel, while Keanu Reeves already has; plus notes on Barbara Stanwyck, noir, and more.

Jan 31, 2023 — In this shape-shifting exploration of creativity, couplehood, and artistic influence, Mia Hansen-Løve offers a glimpse at the existential heavy lift required by her deceptively simple autofictions.

Nov 4, 2022 — New Senses of Cinema! We’re also reading about John Garfield, Anna Karina, Asghar Farhadi, and Mike Leigh.

Jul 1, 2021 — Wong Kar Wai, Tilda Swinton, Federico Fellini, Claudia Weill, and Steven Soderbergh feature in this week’s round.

Nov 19, 2020 — For most of my life, makeover sequences in film comedies held an irresistible allure. The mousy young woman who realizes her own inner and outer (but mostly outer) beauty after receiving the attentions of the right man (or the right...

May 27, 2020 — Walking, like breathing, is something we do without thinking, an activity so commonplace that pedestrian has as its second meaning uninspired, ordinary, dull. Movies, however, reveal this action as more than just the original mode of getting from here to...