The Unknown Girl

Nov 26, 2019 — In a key scene of the beloved Bette Davis film Now, Voyager (1942), the heroine goes to dinner on a cruise ship wearing a cloak decorated with fritillaries. A fritillary is a spangled butterfly, and the scene signals that Charlotte...

Oct 31, 2019 — A series of films by one of India’s greatest and most fiercely independent directors opens in New York.

Jun 17, 2018 — The stakes are high. An unknown entertainer newly arrived in a foreign country prepares for her first performance, under pressure to make a hit with a restless, rowdy audience. It is a hot night; the crowd exudes a collective humidity,...

Apr 16, 2018 — Following lineup announcements from the Cannes Film Festival and Critics’ Week, the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, or Directors’s Fortnight has presented the slate for its fiftieth edition, running from May 9 through 19. “As per the tradition of the parallel section,”...

Jan 31, 2018 — The SXSW Film Festival, whose 2018 edition runs from March 9 through 18, has announced a lineup of 132 features—with more on the way. With descriptions from the festival . . . Narrative Feature CompetitionFamily. Director/Screenwriter: Laura Steinel. When an...

Dec 30, 2017 — Cinema lost a few giants this year, some soldiers, some heroes, duly heralded or not, and links from a good number of the names here will take you to collections of remembrances. I’ve also added notes and a few more...

Nov 18, 2017 — Don Hertzfeldt “has created a singular universe of stick figures in crisis,” writes David Ehrlich, introducing his interview for IndieWire. “One of life’s few perfect things, World of Tomorrow [2015] is as mordantly funny and existentially fraught as anything Hertzfeldt...

Aug 31, 2017 — “Lucrecia Martel is the elusive poet of Latin-American cinema, missing believed lost, the Mary Celeste in human form,” begins the Guardian’s Xan Brooks. “She made La Cienaga and The Holy Girl; split the Cannes audience in two with her brilliant,...

Mar 29, 2016 — Les Blank’s long-lost documentary revels in the trippy, eccentric world of and surrounding Tulsa Sound pioneer Leon Russell, transforming what might have been a standard concert movie into a genuine work of art.

Jun 5, 2014 — The following is excerpted from an interview with Red River editor Christian Nyby that critic Ric Gentry conducted in 1991.