The First Time

Feb 13, 2021 — Ify Chiejina is a Nigerian American artist from Queens, New York, with a multifaceted process that incorporates drawing, painting, collage, and pattern design, resulting in a distinctive approach to portraiture. Her work speaks to themes of family, identity, and a...

Dec 29, 2017 — From C. Mason Wells comes word that Dan Talbot, founder of New Yorker Films (and pictured above in front of the New Yorker Theater with Alfred Hitchcock), has passed away. “Alongside his wife Toby, few did more for world cinema...

Mar 28, 2022 — Rosine Mbakam’s documentaries are exercises in reconfiguring relations of power. Her first three nonfiction features are all portraits of Cameroonian women, each of whom is invited to participate in coconstructing a cinematic space of testimony, candor, and expressive autonomy. Filmed...

Jan 5, 2015 — Who is Tootsie, anyway?

Jul 25, 2014 — Erik Skjoldbjærg’s sun-drenched noir follows a detective trying to conceal his amoral actions amid unforgiving daylight.

Apr 6, 2012 — Did You See This? • Looking through Keyhole with Guy Maddin • A stunning Rear Window time-lapse panorama • He likes words. • Watch Kubrick’s first three docs. • Is Leo McCarey’s Ruggles of Red Gap “the most patriotic American...

Nov 23, 2010 — An overdub has no choice, an image cannot rejoice.—“Porpoise Song”Where there is choice, there is misery.—SwamiHow’s about some more steam?—Sonny Liston The final episode of the television show The Monkees aired March 25, 1968. Cowritten and directed by Micky Dolenz,...

Oct 19, 2009 — Though known primarily for her wildly varied, continent-hopping features (Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala, Vanity Fair, The Namesake), Indian director Mira Nair has for the past three decades also been forging a parallel career of short filmmaking. Both fiction (Migration, How...

Jan 15, 2009 — I have never seen New York look so beautifully grand as it did during my trip to Paris this New Year’s. Maybe I should explain. It was my great fortune to be visiting the City of Light while the intensely...

Emily VanDerWerff is the critic at large for Vox and was the first TV editor of the A.V. Club. Her writing has also appeared in Grantland and the Los Angeles Times. She is the coauthor of Monsters of the Week:...