The Quiet American

Dec 12, 2025 — This week: Bi Gan, Radu Jude, a new Film Quarterly, and of course, more year-end lists and polls.

Sep 24, 2025 — Jacques Audiard’s Paris-set drama about small-time hoodlum with musical ambitions crystallized his identity as an artist with a high degree of confidence and control.

Aug 26, 2025 — Alice Wu’s feature debut is a romantic comedy in which the most compelling relationship is the one between a young queer Chinese American woman and her long-widowed mother.

Jun 17, 2025 — Mitchell Leisen’s marvelously chic and brilliantly constructed screwball classic revolves around a heroine who flounders through a succession of complications but always manages to come out ahead.

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.

Dec 6, 2024 — Richard Linklater and James Benning revisit Godard’s Breathless and Wim Wenders looks back on Paris, Texas.

Jan 29, 2024 — Jurors, audiences, and critics seem to agree that 2024 is off to a promising start.

Feb 22, 2022 — The fourth feature by the Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui devastatingly lays bare the conditions that spurred hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to flee after the fall of Saigon.

Aug 18, 2020 — Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker’s restless, captivating Direct Cinema triumph Town Bloody Hall is a work of oceanography, documenting one splashy moment in the cresting and crashing of American feminism’s second wave. The film chronicles the “Dialogue on Women’s...

Mar 6, 2020 — Above photo: © Chuck Stewart Photography, LLCIn America, black musical genius has never been in short supply, though it hasn’t always been recognized or fairly compensated. Even a casual glance at the résumé of formally trained composer, producer, and arranger...