Life at the Top

Aug 27, 2019 — In the run-up to Venice, Telluride, and Toronto, New York announces its retrospective and revivals.

Feb 20, 2019 — An overview of the award winners and a few critical and personal favorites.

May 6, 2025 — A two-part, thirty-film retrospective opens in New York before traveling to Berkeley, Harvard, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Jul 23, 2021 — Deep Dives In later years, Buster Keaton referred to his signing of a contract with MGM as “the worst mistake of my career.” In 1928 it was purely a business decision. The last few films he had made for his own...

Apr 9, 2021 — Uncovering “The Naked City,” Bruce Goldstein’s scintillating chronicle of The Naked City’s groundbreaking New York location shoot, is more than the best “where-they-filmed-it” doc ever made. As Goldstein wittily traces director Jules Dassin’s Gotham roots and influences, this twenty-three-minute documentary—now...

May 30, 2019 — The star of classics directed by Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Kinugasa, Ozu, Ichikawa, and Teshigahara was ninety-five.

Dec 23, 2017 — Let’s first take a quick break from 2017 and look back fifty years (as I suspect we’ll be doing a lot in 2018). For Little White Lies, Justine Smith has been rifling through various archives and has put together a...

Oct 15, 2015 — Coming off the success of John, her latest acclaimed stage production, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker is more in demand than ever.

Dec 12, 2025 — This week: Bi Gan, Radu Jude, a new Film Quarterly, and of course, more year-end lists and polls.

Jan 26, 2023 — This great director from the golden age of Mexican cinema drew upon a wide range of styles to explore the conflict between tradition and modernity.