Buttoners

Sep 15, 2020 — For some, this nineteenth-century love story “never catches fire,” but for others, it’s “one of the finest films of the year.”

Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda In September 2018, I screened Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places for the Michigan State University Film Collective. We had a lively discussion that went past the scheduled ending time. As I was getting...

Apr 17, 2019 — Dark Passages The old saying that there are no small parts, only small actors, has surely caused thespians of all sizes to roll their eyes and gnash their teeth. But there are performances that stick in the mind forever with...

Sep 4, 2018 — Natalie Portman sings, Willem Dafoe paints, and Frederick Wiseman heads to Trump country.

Aug 8, 2018 — The selection of thirty films features highlights from Cannes, Locarno, Venice, and Toronto.

Jan 25, 2018 — One of the pivotal works of the Direct Cinema movement, the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin’s documentary Salesman plays in a new restoration at Manhattan’s Metrograph.

Jan 22, 2018 — New York. There’s a celebration going on at the Quad Cinema through Wednesday, A Journey Through Cinema: Ten Years of the Cohen Media Group. At Screen Slate, Caroline Golum picks out Maurice Pialat’s Loulou (1980) from the program to spotlight,...

Dec 12, 2017 — Before turning to the cities, we have a bit of festival news. The Locarno Festival, whose seventy-first edition will run from August 1 through 11, has announced that its “major Retrospective will be dedicated to three-time Oscar winner Leo McCarey...

Dec 7, 2017 — “After mining the American soul (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master) as brilliantly as any working director has in the last fifty years,” begins Robert Abele at TheWrap, “Paul Thomas Anderson moves to 1950’s England for Phantom Thread,...

Dec 6, 2017 — “There’s topical, there’s timely, and then there’s The Post, which feels less like a historical thriller set in 1971 than it does an exhilarating caricature of the year 2017,” begins David Ehrlich at IndieWire. “While Steven Spielberg’s latest film rivetingly...