S.O.B.

Jan 9, 2026 — The director of some of the bleakest films ever made once claimed all they were all comedies—except one.

Dec 19, 2025 — This week: Kubrick conspiracies, Malickian movies, Spike Lee’s musical moments, and a talk with Rebecca Hall.

Dec 18, 2025 — At year’s end, we’re reading about the partnership and breakup of Alfred Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann—and much more.

Dec 16, 2025 — Paul Reubens’s iconic character comes to cinematic life in this collaboration with director Tim Burton, who creates an on-screen world that evokes the unbridled joy and overwhelming terror of childhood.

Nov 26, 2025 — This short week brings writing on Wong Kar Wai’s first series and Kubrick’s and Pasolini’s last features.

Nov 25, 2025 — Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella Traumnovelle, Stanley Kubrick’s final film is a deeply personal examination of the fragility of marriage and the destructive power of sexual fantasy.

Nov 13, 2025 — The filmmaker’s memoir is “messy, manic, and shot through with revelation.”

Oct 30, 2025 — Classics of the genre—including Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession and David Cronenberg’s The Fly—explore the gory extremes of corporeal experience.

Sep 29, 2025 — Notes on new studies of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick and biographies of Jane Birkin and Terrence Malick.

Sep 24, 2025 — Jacques Audiard’s Paris-set drama about small-time hoodlum with musical ambitions crystallized his identity as an artist with a high degree of confidence and control.