Character

Jan 31, 2019 — Trailblazer Elaine May altered the landscape of comedy and screenwriting, and in the three films she directed in the 1970s—A New Leaf (1971) , The Heartbreak Kid (1972), and Mikey and Nicky (1976)—she brought a fresh, often uncomfortable perspective to the portrayal of...

Jan 25, 2019 — This week features major new resource on The Magnificent Ambersons, Godard’s allusions, and Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s multimedia extravaganza.

Jan 8, 2019 — A few lingering observations on the films of 2018 from Slate’s Movie Club, the New York Times, and more.

Dec 18, 2018 — Whatever your cinephilic interest—cinematography, acting, criticism—there’ll likely be a new book to take with you into the holidays.

Dec 18, 2018 — Half a century before Julien Duvivier made his 1946 film Panique, the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon published his influential study of mob behavior, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, in which he argued that recent upheavals in...

Dec 14, 2018 — In this week’s round: Tarkovsky and Eisenstein, Godard and Varda, and one of the most consequential television programs of all time.

Dec 7, 2018 — Christian Petzold’s films are like dances in which people circle each other but never quite connect. The most resonant moments in the German writer-director’s work are not ones of dialogue or plot development but of blocking and choreography: bodies intertwining,...

Nov 29, 2018 — The largest retrospective in the U.S. yet is on through mid-December.

Nov 28, 2018 — The career of one of Italy’s greatest directors was riddled with scandal and accolades.

Nov 27, 2018 — With The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles created a model of period filmmaking, lightly deploying historical signifiers while focusing on the haunting power of his actors’ faces.