The Last Castle

Sep 16, 2019 — In a dark moment, Laurence Olivier often reached for a laugh. His lofty, somewhat burdensome reputation as his century’s greatest dramatic actor belies the mercurial essence of his craft, which was to seize upon the humanity in each of his...

Mar 1, 2019 — Claire Simon begins her new documentary The Competition with a shot of young filmmakers chatting outside the locked gates of La Fémis, the most prestigious film school in France, patiently awaiting an opportunity to be judged by a panel of...

Jul 2, 2018 — Josef von Sternberg may have been one of cinema’s original micromanagers, but his films are testaments to longstanding collaborations with brilliant artists and technicians.

Jan 26, 2018 — Death has been greedy this week, taking not only artists who have left their mark on cinema but others, too, who have made an impact on our culture overall. The week began with the passing on Monday of Ursula K....

Dec 17, 2017 — New York. The series All or Nothing: The Fearless Performances of Daniel Day-Lewis is on at the Quad Cinema through December 24 and, in the Village Voice, Bilge Ebiri writes: “He doesn’t just do the work; he shows us the...

Nov 9, 2017 — “DOC NYC started in 2010 and is now, at 250 movies and dozens of filmmaker workshops (best in class: ‘Show Me the Money Day’) spread over eight days [November 9 through 16], the biggest and probably best one-stop venue for...

Oct 28, 2017 — We begin with a few translations. Asymptote lives up to its own billing as “the premier site for world literature in translation” with the presentation of Adam Kuplowsky’s renderings in English of some observational work by Yasujiro Ozu. “These three...

Jun 27, 2017 — Let’s break the pattern a bit and open today’s entry with the recommended listening first. Karina Longworth’s outstanding podcast You Must Remember This has just returned from a well-deserved hiatus with a new series, “Jean and Jane.” As in Seberg...

Sep 1, 2016 — Balancing epic scale with lyrical intimacy, Orson Welles inflects the spirit of Shakespeare’s history plays with his own zest for cinematic invention.

Jun 25, 2013 — How Claude Lanzmann made a thoughtful film about the unthinkable and unfilmable.