The Blue Bird

May 13, 2024 — Among this month’s highlights are a bustling summer barbecue of amply peopled movies full of unforgettable performances, a collection of films with great synth soundtracks, and Adventures in Moviegoing with Paul Schrader.

Jul 25, 2019 — The festival will premiere new work from James Gray, Haifaa al-Mansour, Roy Andersson, Ciro Guerra, Costa-Gavras, Roman Polanski, and Olivier Assayas.

Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...

Oct 11, 2011 — A. E. W. Mason’s sweeping action novel The Four Feathers (1902) had already inspired three films by the time producer Alexander Korda got to it in 1939. It would be filmed three more times afterward. But you really haven’t seen it...

May 27, 2025 — In the singular mid-1980s TV show Eternity’s Pillar, the jazz iconoclast gives viewers a chance to experience the healing powers of her music—and the intense spiritual practice that fuels it.

Aug 28, 2020 — “Anyone with that kind of brilliance, you just give them space . . . She was a kind of unique, extraordinary, eccentric wild animal. And some jewels came out of her mouth.” Richard Gere On Halloween 1978, a month after...

May 21, 2020 — Deep Dives “Right then, get dressed!” my mother sang out once a year when I was a child. “We’re going down the Lane,” and I was at the front door with my coat on before she was. The Lane was...

Jun 30, 2017 — “Founded in 1946 and situated in the picturesque Czech spa town,” the “Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) is seen as one of the most prestigious events on the circuit,” writes Orlando Parfitt at the top of his preview of...

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

Apr 20, 2010 — In 1992, I went to Paris to see some movies that weren’t turning up on these shores, at least not as quickly as I wanted them to. At the time, it meant something particular to be going to Paris to...