Before, Now & Then

Sep 12, 2024 — Chime, a French remake of Serpent’s Path, and Japan’s Oscar submission, Cloud, have all premiered within months of each other.

Jun 11, 2024 — A radically strange, postmodern adaptation of a novel by Jean Genet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film is grounded by a sweaty, seething, meaty eroticism—a confrontational sexuality that remains bracing.

Dec 19, 2023 — Year’s end brings new translations of Serge Daney and Jean Cocteau and new books on Francis Ford Coppola and Jia Zhangke.

Sep 25, 2023 — This month brings collections on Straub-Huillet and Whit Stillman, an Anna May Wong biography, and a novel starring Marilyn Monroe.

Jul 15, 2022 — This week we head back to 1981 with Reverse Shot, to the 1970s with Straub-Huillet, and to the 1960s with Marco Bellocchio.

May 17, 2022 — Juzo Itami’s tragicomic directorial debut has scandalous fun with the Japanese traditions governing death.

Nov 30, 2021 — Lost films are not the only tragedy of the silent age. It’s time that we counted up all the forgotten stories, and the overlooked connections as well. The truth is that lost films and lost memories can’t be separated. One...

Aug 10, 2021 — Hirokazu Kore-eda’s international breakthrough is a bittersweet meditation on mortality, memory, and the movies.

Jun 30, 2021 — First Person The first thing I’d like to note is that long before I was briefly an usher in a movie theater, my father was briefly an usher in a movie theater. That might not be so much in my...

May 25, 2021 — 1. William Lindsay Gresham’s first book—the sordid carnival-sideshow noir Nightmare Alley—was the author’s only considerable literary success. A controversial best seller upon its publication in 1946, the novel was quickly followed by a film adaptation the next year. Gresham would...