Life Is Beautiful

Dec 12, 2025 — This week: Bi Gan, Radu Jude, a new Film Quarterly, and of course, more year-end lists and polls.

May 23, 2025 — We’re in the mood for Wong Kar Wai, Kira Muratova, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Alan Rudolph, and Dag Johan Haugerud.

Feb 18, 2025 — HIghlights this month include a look back at the Dogme 95 movement, a showcase of great supporting performances, and spotlights on directors Michael Mann, Alain Guiraudie, and Lee Chang-dong.

Nov 12, 2024 — Innovative metafictions and fresh readings of classic novels arrive along with books on Robert Kramer, Terrence Malick, and Nora Ephron.

May 2, 2024 — The series spotlights rarely seen films by Shirley Clarke, Marie Menken, Bette Gordon, Jack Smith, and dozens more.

Mar 12, 2024 — In this profoundly emotional portrait of artist Nan Goldin, director Laura Poitras explores how her subject’s creative sensibility and commitment to activism spring from the same source.

Jan 21, 2022 — Welles, Hitchcock, Malick, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Jonas Mekas appear between the covers this month.

Jul 9, 2021 — A raucous, fast-talking diva, the actor had a remarkable ability to convey both glamour and silliness, a gift that made her the queen of screwball comedy before her untimely death in 1942.

May 25, 2021 — In Edmund Goulding’s gritty cult classic, Tyrone Power casts off his matinee-idol image to play a conniving carnival barker on the flipside of the American dream.

Apr 9, 2021 — Uncovering “The Naked City,” Bruce Goldstein’s scintillating chronicle of The Naked City’s groundbreaking New York location shoot, is more than the best “where-they-filmed-it” doc ever made. As Goldstein wittily traces director Jules Dassin’s Gotham roots and influences, this twenty-three-minute documentary—now...