Several Friends

Jun 26, 2013 — On the life and work of the famous Czech author, and the pleasures and challenges of translating him.

May 21, 2013 — It’s tough to tell where reality ends and fiction begins in Haskell Wexler’s deft chronicle of a turbulent era.

Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...

Feb 25, 2013 — When an ethnographic filmmaker and a sociologist joined forces, they helped change the course of nonfiction cinema.

Dec 11, 2012 — Philip Glass’s experimental operas and symphonic works of the 1960s and ’70s laid the groundwork for his hypnotic Qatsi scores.

Aug 29, 2012 — With humor and melancholy, Franc Roddam’s coming-of-age drama, based on the Who’s iconic album, shows us a g-g-generation on the edge.

Aug 21, 2012 — Andrew Haigh’s boy-meets-boy story reminds us that the biggest pleasures of falling in love come from the little moments of connection.

Jul 6, 2012 — Samuel Fuller wrote this extraordinary “interview” piece shortly after White Dog was completed. It appeared in issue 19 of the journal Framework in 1982, with this introduction: “The director of Paramount’s White Dog interviewed the title actor of the movie...

Jun 13, 2012 — Tasteful British cinema got a refreshing dose of amorality with Danny Boyle’s stylish and violent tale of greed and paranoia.

May 8, 2012 — To start on a personal note: I wrote a book about La haine that came out in November 2005, just as the Paris suburbs (banlieues) erupted in an unprecedented wave of violence. Every night, as in the Bob Marley song we...