The Kings of the World

Feb 1, 2019 — Rotterdam and Vanity Fair get a cinephile’s dream roster of filmmakers talking about their work.

Jun 4, 2016 — Wim Wenders’s road movies, Michael Almereyda writes, are “at once minimal and romantic, austere and lyrical,” focusing on questions—of individuals and society, culture and nature—that Wenders has returned to throughout his career.

Jan 6, 2014 — Critics commonly describe Throne of Blood (1957) as Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth. While this description is certainly not untrue, the film is much more than a direct cinematic translation of a literary text. Kurosawa’s movie is a brilliant synthesis...

Jan 26, 2010 — If Paris, Texas is a love letter to America and American cinema, it now also has something of the feel of a farewell: the world to which Wenders pays homage is vanishing fast.

Dec 21, 2008 — In 1962, Roberto Rossellini called a press conference in a bookshop in Rome and announced that the cinema was dead. “There’s a crisis not just in film but culture as a whole,” he explained. Increasingly, Rossellini had understood the great...

Aug 27, 2026 — The illuminating 1982 documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine follows the celebrated author on a journey through the American South, as he attempts to reckon with the legacy and losses of the civil rights movement.

Dec 17, 2025 — Spike Lee captures the democratic spirit and the galvanizing, near-spiritual feeling of togetherness at the heart of David Byrne’s acclaimed stage production.

Sep 22, 2025 — The director of the documentary Celluloid Underground discusses his life as a curator, Iranian film culture, and the inherent ephemerality of cinema.

Apr 2, 2021 — More mysteries from Rian Johnson plus notes on forthcoming films from Steven Spielberg, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Alma Har’el, and more.

Sep 22, 2020 — Francesco Rosi’s film Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) is based on Carlo Levi’s novelistic memoir of the same name, which became an instant classic of Italian literature when it appeared at the end of World War II, in 1945. In...