What Dreams May Come

Jan 10, 2020 — How many times, in cultural history, has surrealism been declared out for the count? For the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, writing in 1929, surveying the surrealist literature of André Breton, Robert Desnos, and Louis Aragon, the glory days of this...

Dec 20, 2019 — The following account was scratched together in August 1990, when Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World was still taking shape in the editing room. Apart from a basic rinse of copy editing, I’m offering it up essentially as is,...

Dec 13, 2019 — A crash course in the history of dance on film and an in-depth conversation about Pedro Costa are among this week’s items of note.

Sep 27, 2019 — Some of the top titles premiering in Berlin, Locarno, and Venice this year are featured in the New York Film Festival’s Main Slate.

Sep 5, 2019 — Critics split three ways: Joker is just plain great, or great but dangerous, or dangerous and also really quite bad.

Jun 6, 2019 — Deep Dives He is our treasured resident alien, visiting from a dimension where shadows are rooms and movies are bad dreams that change reality. That’s one kind of way to think about David Lynch, and there are thousands more. For...

Apr 5, 2019 — Deep dives into the work of Bob Fosse and Buster Keaton and a mash note to Aki Kaurismäki lead this week’s highlights.

Jan 23, 2019 — Checking in on how the nominees are currently faring with critics and awards prognosticators.

Jan 3, 2019 — We look ahead to films by Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Paul Verhoeven, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and dozens more.

May 23, 2018 — About halfway through Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (2016), Dr. Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) finds himself in a patch of woods in the middle of the night, crying. It’s a surprisingly vulnerable moment for a protagonist who is usually all business. We’re...