The First Year

Oct 26, 2016 — The tropes of light comedy give way to a Kafkaesque nightmare in this incendiary critique of moral rot in Franco-era Spain.

May 24, 2016 — In The Player, Robert Altman’s early nineties comeback film, the director brilliantly skewers Hollywood—getting all the details right, as only he could—while constructing his own kind of Hollywood Movie.

Apr 29, 2016 — The writer-director of such witty cultural sendups as Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco talks about that early-career trilogy; his new Jane Austen adaptation, Love and Friendship; and the filmmaker’s work of capturing the past.

Apr 22, 2016 — Writer Harold Schechter shares a list of five true-crime films that encapsulate the essence of fear—including collection favorites In Cold Blood, The Honeymoon Killers, and Badlands—in the Library of America’s biweekly Moviegoer column.

Oct 22, 2007 — Through the alcohol-induced convulsive movements of Firmin, a fallen diplomat, John Huston puts what is perhaps his own fear of decline, of departure without making peace with one’s loved ones, on the screen.

Dec 4, 2006 — A companion piece to Grey Gardens, this documentary stands on its own as a portrait of two women creatively passing the time as Rome burns.

Jan 15, 1996 — If Akira Kurosawa is the John Ford of Japanese samurai dramas, then director Kihachi Okamoto—a specialist in action films, with a particulat accent on violence and raw characterizations—is the samurai film’s Sam Fuller.

Jul 6, 2026 — Karlovy Vary hosts the world premiere of a new restoration of the Czech director’s 1988 tragicomedy.

Feb 9, 2026 — Films from South Africa, Bangladesh, France, and Georgia are among this year’s winners.

Feb 6, 2026 — There’s an AI-driven reconstruction of The Magnificent Ambersons underway, a restoration of Michael Almereyda’s Nadia in theaters—and more.