This Is the End

Jun 17, 2010 — How do you make a comedy about something as serious as the Nazi threat of world domination—particularly as it is happening? Perhaps there’s something in the English character that allows them to see humor in disaster. Some sort of survival...

Jan 12, 2024 — This week’s given us essays on Chantal Akerman and Edward Yang and conversations with Takeshi Kitano and Robert Bresson.

May 8, 2025 — The lineup features newly restored films by Chaplin, Kubrick, Mikio Naruse, Edward Yang, Satyajit Ray, and John Woo.

Jun 2, 2015 — Having made such urgent, ripped-from-the-headlines, international dramas as Z, The Confession, State of Siege, and Missing, it stands to reason that the Greek director Costa-Gavras is often referred to as a political filmmaker. But in this excerpt from a wide-ranging...

Aug 24, 2020 — In memory of D. A. Pennebaker (1925–2019) 1. The great documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker was motivated to shoot by curiosity. He loved music and friendship, and he had an understanding that everything he filmed recorded histories both personal and...

Dec 8, 2018 — Bluebeard films, German theorists, Fassbinder’s attack, sensory experiences, and the world’s largest movie studio.

Dec 19, 2013 — Repertory PicksIt’s a tradition. Every year at Christmastime, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago resurrects Hiroshi Teshigahara’s exquisite documentary cum visual poem Antonio Gaudí for a weeklong engagement. This largely wordless film, which shows us the beautiful and grand...

Sep 20, 2023 — Few of Wang’s films contrast as starkly as Youth (Spring) and Man in Black, and both are set to screen in New York.

Feb 23, 2004 — Laurence Olivier’s last entry in his trilogy of Shakespeare films is the crowning glory of the British studio system and the end of the great cycle of British films aimed at international audiences.

Jul 12, 2018 — The director of Bull Durham explains the ins and outs of bringing baseball to the screen and why Kevin Costner is the finest athletic actor he’s worked with.