The Reading

Jan 9, 2017 — Since its inception more than a half-century ago, the National Society of Film Critics has maintained its reputation for championing idiosyncratic and independent voices during the commercially driven awards season, with past best picture awards going to films like Michelangelo...

Sep 3, 2007 — It came from nowhere, it’s always been here—or so Stranger Than Paradise might seem.Jim Jarmusch had completed his first feature, Permanent Vacation, in 1980 and spent the next four years working on his second. Screened a few times as a...

Sep 13, 2004 — This oblique strategy can be seen as a self-referential characterization of Slacker itself: it appears to have no struc­ture, to be chaotic (a matter of random encounters), when, in fact, it has a very subtle, extremely well-crafted structure that makes...

Aug 17, 2021 — This month we’re reading about Hollywood memoirs, cultural histories, and the revived debate over the screenplay for Last Year at Marienbad.

Apr 16, 2021 — This week we’re checking in on the cinemas of Brazil and South Korea, reading about Terrence Malick, and listening in on Emma Thompson and Tony Kushner.

Apr 1, 2024 — The show may be “resolutely low-risk” overall, but for many, the standouts are film and video works.

May 17, 2018 — The Los Angeles noir starring Andrew Garfield is met with mixed reviews.

Jun 1, 2017 — By turns gritty and lyrical, this portrait of the Syria-Turkey border brings together two pioneers of Turkish cinema.

Sep 28, 2016 — “King of the Nudies” Russ Meyer injects his transgressive exuberance into this big-studio send-up of Hollywood debauchery.

Feb 19, 2026 — In more than forty nonfiction features, he tried, as he said, “to create dramatic structures out of ordinary experience.”