The First Year

Apr 23, 2025 — World premieres of new restorations and plenty of anniversaries will be celebrated this year.

Dec 17, 2024 — A remarkable breakthrough in Hong Kong action cinema, this rip-roaring spectacle represents the peak of Hung’s commitment to ensemble-oriented filmmaking.

Aug 27, 2024 — A brilliant satire, inspired by a 1973 PBS documentary series that gave rise to the reality-television genre, Albert Brooks’s first feature film examines the ethical dilemmas of combining cheap entertainment and sociological experiment.

Nov 16, 2022 — After glimpsing his great-great-grandfather on-screen, a writer searches for the history of a landmark silent film.

Jul 19, 2022 — Our midsummer books roundup opens with one sharp critique and one celebration of American popular culture.

Mar 1, 2022 — The first film I saw at last year’s Morelia International Film Festival opens on the image of a freshly dug grave. Shovelfuls of earth fall into the open pit as two doctors stand above it, lamenting the loss of yet...

Oct 14, 2021 — Voir is “a new documentary series of visual essays celebrating cinema.”

Dec 11, 2018 — Note: The terms black and white were part of the way racial categories were referred to in South Africa under apartheid. Other terms, like nonwhite and non-European, were also used to mark racial segregation. In the following essay, the term...

May 21, 2018 — W hether she’s pushing herself to new heights on stage and screen or nurturing her passions as a painter and poet, Juliette Binoche is as creatively voracious now as she’s ever been. Her combination of strength and disarming vulnerability as...

Mar 29, 2018 — New York. “Billed as a ‘meta-soap opera,’ Personal Problems is nothing less than an explosion of the television form,” begins Chuck Bowen at Slant. “Directed by Bill Gunn, the two-part, nearly three-hour miniseries was shot on video for a low...