Praise of Death

Nov 26, 2018 — Even as he chronicles the downfall of an American family, Orson Welles brings a sense of buoyancy to this grim saga through his virtuoso storytelling.

Aug 25, 2015 — In Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s moving and humane critique of capitalism, true interpersonal communication is the only thing that can save us.

Sep 16, 2013 — Ingmar Bergman plumbs the depths of a fractured family and gives Ingrid Bergman a shocking star role.

Sep 22, 2009 — Something very heavy happened at Monterey last weekend. Those very odd three days began in Friday’s cool gray air as the first of the crowd began to circle through the booths of the fairground. The only word for it then...

Jan 5, 2004 — “Sometimes I think of my death,” Kurosawa has written: “I think of ceasing to be . . . and it is from these thoughts that Ikiru came.” The story of a man who knows he is going to die, the...

Sep 24, 1992 — It was in 1947 that Vladimir Nabokov began writing what he described as “a short novel about a man who liked little girls.” Completed in 1954, the manuscript was rejected as pornographic by at least four New York publishers. Nabokov...

Apr 27, 2026 — The festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film will roll out across five New York venues.

Aug 4, 2025 — The Lovers on the Bridge (1991) is restored, a series is on in New York, and another heads to Austin.

Sep 22, 2021 — Writer-director John Huston blasted the fusty pieties that pervaded big-studio filmmaking in the post-Code era, whether as the progenitor of film noir with The Maltese Falcon (1941) or the brainy daredevil who threaded critiques of frontier capitalism, gold lust, and...

Aug 3, 2020 — Songbook “You’ve probably heard that one before, but what the hell. If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” first spoken dialogue in Inside Llewyn Davis The coldest murder in the Coen Brothers...