Life Is

May 13, 2009 — It doesn’t really come as a surprise that Chris Marker is a devoted inhabitant of the virtual world Second Life. After all, one could call the playful French filmmaker and multimedia artist’s kitty—and alter ego—Guillaume-en-Egypt a trailblazing avatar (when asked...

Jun 30, 2008 — The idea of self-fashioning—of deliberately taking the raw materials of one’s body and mind and transforming them into a work of art—has been with us at least since the Renaissance. Yet no one, not even Oscar Wilde, has so rigorously...

Jan 21, 2008 — Lindsay Anderson’s adaptation of David Storey’s novel is a clenched fist of a movie that follows a professional Rugby League player who instinctively channels feeling through physical aggression.

Dec 22, 2025 — The critic and curator talks about working on a program of films by trailblazing Black women directors, which opened at London’s BFI Southbank this year and is now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Sep 30, 2025 — Made with a formal control unparalleled in modern American cinema, the films of this utterly distinctive auteur seek to contain and understand an uncontainable, unknowable world.

Oct 11, 2023 — The shock of Davies’s passing is compounded by the sinking realization that cinema has lost one of its most singular artists.

Jan 24, 2023 — The Daniels’ gender-blender is out front, followed by The Banshees of Inisherin and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Nov 22, 2022 — Spike Lee’s transcendent portrait of an American hero is an urgent call for the nation to live up to everything it claims to be.

Sep 20, 2022 — The Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan’s strip-club-set drama is an intricate tapestry of grief and trauma, held together by a longing for human connection.

Jun 28, 2022 — Boasting a larger-than-life Divine, John Waters’ underground classic finds the sublime in the ridiculous.