The Jar

Feb 17, 2023 — Born and raised far from the centers of power in the movie industry, writer-director Glen Pitre began his career in the 1980s as a DIY filmmaker, showing his homemade productions to audiences in his native Louisiana. But when a powerful...

Oct 16, 2020 — First Person One of the internet’s more delightful creations is a compilation of Aaron Sorkin quotes assembled by a man named Kevin Porter in 2012. Its purpose is to expose the screenwriter’s propensity for repetition. Some of the examples, plucked...

Feb 21, 2014 — Did You See This?• Billy Crystal remembers Sid Caesar. • Paolo Sorrentino talks Oscars and more. • Behind the scenes with Stanley Kubrick • Revisiting High and Low • A Tarkovsky poem • Jim Jarmusch vamps • Refurbished Umbrellas •...

Feb 14, 2014 — Did You See This? • Restoring Foreign Correspondent • In contemporary epics, where’s the beef? • Lena Dunham tells all! • A palace to be reopened • Andrew Haigh’s upcoming marital drama • Reading into Rebecca • Jeanine Basinger on...

Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...

Sep 23, 2010 — I work closely on the Eclipse series, and one of the great privileges of that task is the chance to delve into the films and careers of artists I was previously only passingly acquainted with. Allan King is a supreme...

The writer and director pays tribute to the late Béla Tarr, shares his love for the way Andrei Tarkovsky merged poetry and cinema, and suggests watching a double bill of Black Girl and I Knew Her Well.

The musician and Pulp front man shares how films like Blue Velvet and Meantime altered his view of cinema, talks about collaborating with Wes Anderson and Danny Boyle, and decides he’s finally ready to watch Salò, or The 120 Days...

A titan of American independent cinema, the iconoclastic director has sustained an aesthetic of cool through irreverent dramas and deadpan comedies that subvert genre codes.