The New York Hat

Jun 10, 2020 — Years ago I took a seminar on movie stars led by the writer Wayne Koestenbaum, a glittering episode that closed out a rather colorless stint in graduate school. The syllabus was replete with inspired double bills⁠—Deleuze on Leibniz + Lana...

Dec 11, 2017 — Over the weekend, the European Film Awards, the International Documentary Association’s IDA Awards, and the British Independent Film Awards were presented, and now, of course, we have the Golden Globe nominations. A good handful of critics’ organizations announced their picks...

Nov 25, 2015 — Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film about one man’s mortality offers a study in postwar Japan, Kurosawa vs. Ozu, and the realization that knowing how to die requires learning how to be alive.

Jul 31, 2013 — The story of the author’s long correspondence with the silent film icon.

Dec 20, 2019 — The following account was scratched together in August 1990, when Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World was still taking shape in the editing room. Apart from a basic rinse of copy editing, I’m offering it up essentially as is,...

Sep 3, 2018 — Here’s how the competition is shaping up so far.

Apr 19, 2018 — With a mix of improvisation, balletic physicality, and slapstick humor, Hollywood master Leo McCarey crafted the most sublime of screwball comedies.

Feb 15, 2018 — First up, that's Robert Pattinson in the image up there, the first, released just today, from Claire Denis’s High Life. Secondly, Ioncinema’s countdown of the most anticipated American independent films of 2019—again, twenty-nineteen—continues with notes on Shane Carruth’s The Modern...

May 24, 2011 — In 1938, Charles Chaplin deposited with the Library of Congress a script for a film to be called The Dictator, and told the press it was a project in which he would play a double role. He clearly had Hitler...

Jan 17, 2024 — Steven Soderbergh contemplates writing his first novel, while Keanu Reeves already has; plus notes on Barbara Stanwyck, noir, and more.