The General Line

May 20, 2010 — Driven to Destruction Nagisa Oshima was a destructive force in Japanese cinema—and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Intent on exploding taboos and jabbing the eye of the status quo, he created films that leave us with a...

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...

Apr 12, 2024 — Names in the news this week: Alain Delon, John Akomfrah, Francis Ford Coppola, Vera Drew, Charles Burnett, and Miles Davis.

Jul 14, 2021 — Cannes premieres new work from Mia Hansen-Løve, Wes Anderson, Nanni Moretti, Asghar Farhadi, and Kirill Serebrennikov.

Jul 28, 2017 — We begin with the news, reported for days but now officially confirmed, that the New York Film Festival, whose fifty-fifth edition runs from September 28 through October 15, will close with the world premiere of Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel. For...

Jan 20, 2021 — Knausgaard on Bergman and Adam Nayman on Armond White on Steven Spielberg are among this month’s highlights.

Sep 22, 2022 — This month we’re reading about Jean-Luc Godard, Dirk Bogarde, Michael K. Williams, a few new novels, and just the state of things in general.

Jan 20, 2026 — This month, leap into a century of cinema’s greatest stunts, feel the ache of thwarted romance and bittersweet yearning, or get into trouble with the Depression-era hustlers of Mervyn LeRoy’s pre-Code films.

Dec 28, 2022 — We’re getting real in January with a spotlight on cinema verité, a movement that revolutionized documentary filmmaking.

Jun 12, 2024 — This summer, we’re bringing back one of our favorite seasonal themes with a hard-boiled Neonoir collection. Plus: Pop Shakespeare, Times Square, and Columbia Screwball.