The Cruel Sea

Jun 25, 2024 — Barry Jenkins’s extraordinarily ambitious limited series distinguishes itself in the tradition of the cinematic slavery epic through its understanding that Black joy and Black trauma cannot be cleaved from each other.

Oct 28, 2022 — The role of the vampire has given talented actors throughout film history—from Bela Lugosi to Catherine Deneuve—the chance to embody physical and moral extremity.

May 19, 2020 — The range was remarkable, but the projects Piccoli selected and the directors he chose to work with are what make his body of work essential.

Dec 10, 2013 — In 1998, I interviewed Little Edie Beale, the surviving star of 1976’s Grey Gardens, one of the Maysles brothers’ numerous masterworks (Gimme Shelter, Meet Marlon Brando, and With Love from Truman are equal in technical and emotional innovation). Miss Beale,...

Oct 19, 2021 — The works of great artists have a way of reactivating fundamental questions about the nature and potential of an art form. In the case of filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, these questions revolve around a word that has been used routinely to...

Jun 23, 2020 — Late in Tokyo Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa’s thrillingly anomalous record of the 1964 Olympic Summer Games, the film documents one of the most taxing contests, the individual modern pentathlon, in a startling montage of still photographs, accompanied by stark sound effects....

Jun 12, 2012 — Hal Ashby’s delicately off-kilter May-December romance stars two of the unlikeliest countercultural icons of the seventies.

Sep 30, 2024 — Showered with accolades, loved, admired, and feared, Smith was one of the most accomplished stars of the stage and screen.

Mar 28, 2022 — Despite wins to celebrate, the Oscars got off on the wrong foot—and then took a turn for the worse.

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