The Notebook

May 19, 2017 — We’ll get to the film at hand in a moment, but first—and just briefly—there’s no getting around the controversy that’s all but dominated the first couple of days at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It began, really, when the festival...

May 17, 2017 — “For its 70th anniversary,” begins Boyd van Hoeij in the Hollywood Reporter, “the Cannes Film Festival has, very appropriately, chosen to open with a film by French auteur Arnaud Desplechin, a Cannes discovery whose feature debut, The Sentinel, played in...

May 17, 2017 — Welcome to the first entry of the Daily at the Criterion Collection. For those of you who don’t know me, since 2003 I’ve been gathering links to essential—or simply fun—reading, news stories, and items of interest into a sort of...

May 19, 2014 — As in his other films, the world of Abbas Kiarostami’s latest is one of simulation, not-quite-realness, and unexpected tenderness.

Jun 18, 2012 — Theater’s ultimate autobiographer, Spalding Gray, and cinema’s invisible-man auteur, Steven Soderbergh, teamed up for an eye-opening movie monologue.

Feb 21, 2025 — The pioneer of African cinema carried “the inventive temperament of a dreamer armed with a firm political orientation.”

Oct 4, 2011 — Pier Paolo Pasolini’s work demonstrates an aversion for the present while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of escaping it, and thus the need to confront it.

Apr 28, 2023 — This week’s highlights whiplash from a vibrant club scene to the chaotic final days of the Ceaușescu regime, hitting several disparate points in between.

Dec 20, 2022 — Among the names on the shelves this month: Andy Warhol, Bong Joon Ho, Sofia Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Jul 16, 2020 — This month’s round features reviews of books on Jacques Tati, Kelly Reichardt, Terrence Malick, Jordan Peele, and many more.