A Scene at the Sea

Oct 23, 2024 — This once-maligned horror film is an unsparing exploration of sexual violence, remarkably centered on a complex, fully realized female protagonist, played courageously by Barbara Hershey.

Nov 20, 2023 — This month brings new books on Godard and Bergman, novelists moonlighting as film critics, and biographies of Lena Horne and Elizabeth Taylor.

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

Jul 13, 2022 — Stylistically informed by film noir, Martin Scorsese’s searing drama plumbs male violence and rage through a boxing champ’s self-destruction.

May 16, 2022 — This month we’re reading about David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Hong Sangsoo, and Werner Herzog.

Oct 26, 2021 — Considered his first directly political film, Satyajit Ray’s 1960 masterpiece explores how the denial of self-knowledge, a void neither religion nor Western rationalism can fill, takes a toll on women in Indian society.

Jun 17, 2021 — On our minds this week: Lizzie Borden, Jenni Olson, Dorothy Arzner, Marguerite Duras, Jacques Rivette, and female detectives on television.

Dec 17, 2020 — The year 1999 was several months old when I entered Los Guajolotes, a restaurant that, like so many others in Mexico City, has now disappeared. I was walking to my table when a person who appeared to live on the streets...

May 4, 2020 — “You’ve never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you, Diz?”Jean Arthur asks this poetic, expressively peculiar question of Thomas Mitchell in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and we understand her yearning for truth...

Feb 11, 2020 — The universal success of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is undoubtedly due to a skill that the director has demonstrated over the course of several decades and many enduring pieces of work. But it is also a sign of our times. What...