The Work

The actor recalls a memorable viewing of The Red Shoes, celebrates performances by Kirsten Dunst and Nicole Kidman, and shares why The Worst Person in the World made her want to work with Joachim Trier.

The writer, director, actor, and cocreator of Hacks talks about how Being John Malkovich informed his sense of storytelling, praises Vanya on 42nd Street as one of the best productions of Anton Chekhov’s work, and admires Steven Soderbergh’s unique approach...

The Oscar-winning composer selects favorite films that continue to excite him, including Andrei Rublev and Sid & Nancy; praises the transportive nature of Les Blank’s work; and shares how Nicolas Roeg changed his life.

The great documentary filmmaker chooses a group of films that embody some of the qualities he tries to bring to his own work, including straight-faced comedy and the mixture of literal and abstract elements.

The actor and filmmaker came in to work on a supplement for our The Squid and the Whale edition. We learned he’s a big fan of the Robert Downey Sr. Eclipse series.

Beatrice Loayza is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She is a contributing film critic for the New York Times, and her work has appeared in Artforum, 4Columns, Film Comment, the Nation, and other publications.

Chandak Sengoopta, born and educated in Kolkata, is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. The author of many scholarly and popular essays on the cultural contexts of Satyajit Ray’s work and its reception, he was recently awarded...

Aug 5, 2018 — The writer-director of Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay! takes us through an eclectic mix of favorite films, including works by Jane Campion, Lars von Trier, and Satyajit Ray.

Jul 15, 2025 — Much of the program upends assumptions about the postwar years as a period of relative calm and conformity.

Jul 19, 2024 — We’re looking back to films by Pakula and Oshima, and from the 1990s, by Claire Denis and Richard Shepard.