The First Year

Jun 11, 2021 — “The whole world is dying of panicky fright.” The opening on-screen text of Todd Haynes’s Poison promises an unsettled experience. Yet these words also might as well be predicting the puritanical response to the film that erupted from conservative quarters. After winning...

Apr 8, 2021 — The London-based, British Ghanaian artist and filmmaker Larry Achiampong explores race, class, and history in a multidisciplinary practice that, as described in the biography on his website, seeks to “examine his communal and personal heritage—in particular, the intersection between pop...

Aug 13, 2020 — First Person In 1960 The Apartment was playing at Cinema Rialto and was advertised with a loud red poster. I was too young to see it at the time, but I do recall overhearing my parents describing it to their...

Aug 10, 2020 — A slyly feminist film by the only woman directing in the Hollywood studio system of her thirties-and-early-forties heyday, Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance stands as one of the era’s most groundbreaking—and entertaining—backstage sagas. And as it turned out, a different...

Jan 21, 2020 — One of the lesser-known films in Godard’s extraordinary run of 1960s masterpieces, this severe, angular thriller was the director’s first foray into the political territory that would prove so essential to his later work.

Jul 26, 2019 — This week’s round features conversations with Abbas Kiarostami, Christopher Doyle, Julia Loktev, and Barry Jenkins.

Jun 21, 2019 — The French iconoclast explains how his background in industrial filmmaking helped him bring life to abstract ideas about the human condition.

Feb 19, 2019 — Under the Influence Debuts don’t get much more auspicious than Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Widely acclaimed and Oscar-nominated, RaMell Ross’s first feature-length documentary trains its lyrical focus on two young Alabamians’ divergent paths into adulthood, all while reflecting...

Nov 29, 2018 — 112 films, including new work from Joanna Hogg, Stanley Nelson, Kim Longinotto, and Ritesh Batra.

Nov 19, 2018 — Billy Wilder proves himself one of cinema’s greatest pleasure seekers in this irresistible confection, a landmark of Hollywood comedy.