He Was Once

Sep 22, 2025 — The director of the documentary Celluloid Underground discusses his life as a curator, Iranian film culture, and the inherent ephemerality of cinema.

Sep 17, 2025 — One of the most influential comedies of the 1980s, Rob Reiner’s rock-and-roll satire is a remarkably authentic, lived-in portrait of musicians, their egotism, and the industry that feeds off their stardom.

Sep 15, 2025 — First Nomadland, and now, Hamnet. Chloé Zhao is the first filmmaker to win the People’s Choice Award twice.

Sep 11, 2025 — For J. Hoberman, the film “more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary.”

Sep 9, 2025 — Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley enthrall critics with their portrayals of parents mourning the loss of a child.

Aug 28, 2025 — Made for public television, this moving vérité documentary about three terminally ill cancer patients is one of the purest expressions of the director’s career-long preoccupation with human fragility.

Aug 22, 2025 — Hong Kong classics, the best of the 1970s, and a Chantal Akerman exhibition are among this week’s highlights.

Aug 12, 2025 — This remarkably sensitive yet jarringly violent romance epitomizes director Youssef Chahine’s late-fifties hybrid style, which combined elements of Hollywood entertainment with an unmistakably Egyptian spirit.

Aug 5, 2025 — From Grosse Pointe Blank to Singles to Trainspotting, some of the decade’s most memorable fusions of music and cinema brought underground culture to new heights of pop consciousness.

Jul 22, 2025 — In his achingly beautiful debut feature, Kenneth Lonergan captures the dynamics of a sibling relationship shaped by grief, revealing its complexities with narrative economy and deep emotion.