The Set-Up

May 14, 2017 — Yasujiro Ozu’s ode to childhood interweaves observations of human behavior with the simple surfaces of quotidian life in Tokyo.

May 13, 2013 — Delmer Daves’s visually majestic, emotionally charged western finds its drama in the decency of its characters.

Nov 10, 1986 — Max Ophuls’s masterpiece is a transformation of a conventional subject into an avant-garde adventure, and a spectacular stylistic breakthrough in the utilization of wide screen and color.

May 27, 2026 — Is it possible to look without trying to grasp the object of one’s gaze? Traditional ethnographic documentaries, much like the written ethnographies that preceded them, have attempted to explain a given culture to those who don’t belong to it, assuming...

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

May 4, 2017 — Repertory PicksAt the stroke of midnight on Saturday, the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts, will pull back the curtain on one of Brian De Palma’s most shocking and psychologically penetrating films, 1980’s Dressed to Kill, presented in all its...

Feb 4, 2014 — When François Truffaut was a twenty-three-year-old film critic, in 1955, he read an autobiographical first novel by a seventy-four-year-old writer, Henri-Pierre Roché. “The book overwhelmed me,” he later recalled, “and I wrote: If I ever succeed in making films, I...

May 22, 2020 — This week’s round features the story behind John Cassavetes’s debut feature and conversations with Dan Sallitt and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Jun 17, 2019 — Renowned for his adaptations of Shakespeare and great operas, the director was also a controversial Italian senator and stood accused of sexual misconduct.

Apr 4, 2025 — Henry Fonda and Shinji Somai headline a week that also brings new issues of frieze and the Brooklyn Rail.