Lay the Favorite

Nov 24, 2015 — In Dont Look Back, legendary documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker employs his revolutionary new camera and Direct Cinema style to capture the multiple essences and contradictions of a young Bob Dylan making his way across England in 1965.

Nov 26, 2019 — A smart and lively adaptation of a 150-year-old classic is warmly greeted in the first round of reviews.

Jan 29, 2019 — The renowned composer made movie history with his collaborations with Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Joseph Losey, and Barbra Streisand.

Mar 10, 2021 — For about five minutes in Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View, the lights go down on our movie and we’re shown another—an increasingly deranged propaganda short designed to suss out whether someone is Parallax material. That is to say, an...

May 1, 2021 — Filmmaking, at its best, has always sought to bear witness to, and create new perspectives on, our lived realities. But no one has mined the eccentric possibilities of the cinematic medium to address the vertiginous social and cultural changes borne...

Oct 24, 2019 — A retrospective in Vienna focuses on the guerrilla heroes of partisan cinema.

May 22, 2023 — Get in character for a journey through the history of Method acting, a movement that transformed the art of screen performance forever.

Feb 1, 2022 — Douglas Sirk’s 1956 masterpiece is a visceral tragedy that lays bare the spiritual malaise of the ruling class.

Dec 3, 2019 — As the title card comes up, the movie has already begun, with a frontal view of a dilapidated plantation house, its ivied columns sporadically lit up by a raging storm. Spectators at the time of the film’s release who were...

Nov 20, 2023 — This month brings new books on Godard and Bergman, novelists moonlighting as film critics, and biographies of Lena Horne and Elizabeth Taylor.