The First Year

Apr 2, 2021 — More mysteries from Rian Johnson plus notes on forthcoming films from Steven Spielberg, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Alma Har’el, and more.

Oct 20, 2020 — At the start of The Gunfighter, Jimmy Ringo is a man with eleven kills to his name, soon to be twelve. But the only place he actually appears to be very violent, or even very vital, is in other people’s...

Sep 23, 2020 — First Person 1.In the past years I’ve often walked or bicycled alone to the small multiplex in my town, on weeknights. I like sitting by myself in movie theaters—I specify “by myself” to indicate my preference for going unaccompanied, as...

Jul 16, 2020 — This month’s round features reviews of books on Jacques Tati, Kelly Reichardt, Terrence Malick, Jordan Peele, and many more.

Aug 26, 2018 — Tomás Gutiérrez Alea brought cinema to the center of Cuban society with this richly ambiguous portrait of postrevolutionary Havana.

Apr 2, 2018 — Updates are still coming into the first entry on this year’s New Directors/New Films running at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This entry will take us all the way through...

Jan 19, 2018 — “Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti), the beleaguered bohemian-geek couple at the center of Private Life, have been trying, through fertility treatments, to get pregnant for years,” begins Variety’s Owen Gleiberman. Private Life “is a comedy of fragile hopes...

Jan 18, 2018 — To Save and Project: The 15th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation opens tonight with William K. Howard’s Transatlantic (1931; image above), “a pre-Code comedy firmly set during the golden age of ocean travel,” as Caroline Golum notes at Screen...

Dec 4, 2017 — Last Wednesday, the Sundance Film Festival unleashed the entire features lineup for its 2018 edition, running from January 18 through 28. Today, the festival’s adding lineups for a new Indie Episodic section as well as its Shorts and Special Events...

Nov 21, 2017 — Ernst Lubitsch’s “world is defined by time as much as place,” writes Daniel Witkin in the latest entry in Reverse Shot’s symposium on time. “Anachronistically straddling the 19th and 20th centuries, his characters embody unfashionable virtues of discretion and tact...