Poor Things

Sep 13, 2018 — Michael Moore takes on Trump, Werner Herzog meets Gorbachev, and Astra Taylor asks a big question.

Dec 11, 2014 — The opening installment of Terry Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination” reminds us we’d be better off if we paid more attention to the kid’s-eye view of things.

Sep 23, 2014 — In director Jack Clayton’s hands, Henry James’s tale of the sinister and sensual things hiding behind Victorian decorum becomes one of the screen’s great works of terror.

Dec 7, 2010 — Guillermo del Toro understands the power of fairy tales. Not the prettified romances of Charles Perrault, who tamed the Brothers Grimm for French drawing rooms, or the charming animal fables of Aesop, or the reassuring moral lessons Disney made of...

Mar 14, 2005 — A director is naturally a man like everyone else. Yet his life isn’t normal. For us, seeing is a necessity. For a painter, too, the problem is to see. But while the painter has to discover a static reality, or...

Jul 1, 2026 — BAM’s thirteen-film series dips into chapters of American history that tend to get overlooked on Fourth of July weekends.

May 26, 2026 — Of all the performing arts, stand-up comedy may be the most ephemeral, even more so if the humor is considered dangerous or taboo. Stand-up relies on the charged dynamic between a comedian and an audience, with both sides often bringing...

Apr 14, 2026 — Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) is a film about fear. That may not entirely jibe with its reputation as a biblical parody, but it might be the movie’s secret strength—why it continues to strike a nerve today. Many of...

Mar 31, 2026 — Violently nihilistic, simultaneously energizing and crushing, Tsui Hark’s remake of the martial-arts classic One-Armed Swordsman captures the zeitgeist of pre–1997 handover Hong Kong.

Dec 22, 2025 — The critic and curator talks about working on a program of films by trailblazing Black women directors, which opened at London’s BFI Southbank this year and is now playing on the Criterion Channel.