To Die For

Jul 7, 2021 — In the 1990s, Hong Kong was home to a staggering number of the most gifted and charismatic actors in the world. It’s impossible to imagine the films of Wong Kar Wai—or the global art-house phenomenon they generated—without these extraordinary performers;...

Jun 28, 2021 — Next month brings a twenty-seven-film spotlight on the neonoir thrillers of the post-studio-system era, a survey of art-house animation from around the world, and more.

Apr 19, 2021 — What lies beyond the grave? Human cultures across space and time have imagined many kinds of afterlives, from the attenuated shades of Hades to the lush paradise of the Islamic Jannah to the merger with the infinite anticipated by mystics....

Apr 13, 2021 — To fall deeply in love means to take a risk, and no romantic movie is riskier than History Is Made at Night (1937). Producer Walter Wanger came up with the very grand and suggestive title, but he had only two...

Mar 24, 2021 — Performances By the time The Manchurian Candidate was released in 1962, Frank Sinatra had been on American screens and in American hearts for nearly two decades. His bobby-soxers had been displaced by Elvis fans, who had been displaced by Beatles...

Mar 19, 2021 — We’ve been watching and reading about films by Cecilia Mangini, Cheryl Dunye, Claire Denis, and Nina Menkes.

Jan 26, 2021 — I stumbled onto Will Niava’s debut short film, Zoo, via a still I saw online: a close-up of a young man’s face under blue neon, framed by cigarette smoke. Curious about this striking image, I tracked down the film and...

Jan 26, 2021 — Larisa Shepitko was born in eastern Ukraine in 1938. Her mother was a schoolteacher; her father, who left the family, fought in World War II. Her mother raised her and her two siblings on her own, and the moment Larisa...

Jan 25, 2021 — First Person The release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story—the first film of the Star Wars anthology series, and a major occasion for many Star Wars fans—on December 16, 2016, was preceded by a much larger event on November...

Nov 30, 2020 — Channel Calendars As the year draws to an end, we’re turning our gaze toward things to come, with an international, intergalactic program of Afrofuturist visions of Black creativity, resistance, and freedom. That’s just the beginning of our holiday bounty: we’ve...