A Touch of Class

Oct 9, 2020 — In Scoundrels & Spitballers: Writers and Hollywood in the 1930s, veteran French journalist Philippe Garnier brings to life an enchantingly raffish community of typewriter-pounders who headed west to try their luck in the verbal gold rush set off by the...

Oct 9, 2020 — In the summer of 2020, I spoke with Philippe Garnier about his book Scoundrels & Spitballers: Writers and Hollywood in the 1930s, available for the first time in English from Eddie Muller’s Black Pool Productions. The book introduces a rogues’...

Sep 9, 2019 — The jury presided over by Lucrecia Martel has surprised just about everyone.

Jul 1, 2019 — Truffaut, Melville, and Jean Epstein open this month’s round of reviews and discussions of the latest noteworthy publications.

Apr 15, 2019 — She was known as “a professional innocent”—until Persona (1966) revealed a complex emotional intelligence.

Aug 31, 2018 — And a pillar of American film criticism falls.

Jul 17, 2018 — Without doubt, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape struck a nerve when it was released in 1989. Astonishingly, it still does today. Among the most storied of American independent films, it debuted at the U.S. Film Festival (soon to be renamed the...

Mar 1, 2017 — In his most seductive experiment with cinematic time, Richard Linklater wrestles with the joys and challenges of long-term intimacy.

Jan 16, 2017 — Jack Garfein’s no-holds-barred account of sexual assault and trauma captures the volatile sensibility of the Actors Studio.

Aug 13, 2015 — The films Agnès Varda made while living on the West Coast of the United States are some of the most searching and challenging of her stellar career.