Letters to Ali

Apr 28, 2026 — As the 1950s began, Kinuyo Tanaka found herself at a turning point. She had been acting in films since she was fourteen, becoming one of Japan’s most beloved, admired, and prolific women stars. Now in her early forties, she saw...

Mar 25, 2024 — Retrospectives in London and Hong Kong and a screening in Ghent are devoted to the work of the Spanish director.

Dec 16, 2021 — Whether their lists run to ten or fifty films, critics argue their cases for the films they’ve put on top.

Mar 21, 2019 — “The world is full of skeptics,” Detour’s Al Roberts struggles to explain, in voice-over, while on-screen we’re pondering Vera’s dead body. “I know. I’m one myself . . .”Even now, closing in on seventy-five years after the Producers Releasing Corporation...

Apr 2, 2009 — Writing the screenplay with Suzanne Schiffman, I intended to do for the theater what I had done for the cinema in Day for Night: the chronicle of a troupe at work, within a framework respecting the unities of place, time,...

Aug 18, 2003 — One of the Swedish director’s most representative works, this drama’s portentousness, banked intensity, and recondite symbolism come near to embodying the popular stereotype of the Bergmanesque.

Feb 27, 2026 — Tony Kushner revisits Munich, a Satyajit Ray restoration hits theaters, and the new Film Quarterly is out and free.

May 30, 2024 — The season brings new biographies of Ingmar Bergman and Elaine May, a novel by Miranda July, plus interviews, excerpts, and podcasts

Feb 14, 2024 — Portraits of Stanley Kubrick and Agnès Varda, a memoir from Ed Zwick, and a history of Blaxploitation are among the highlights.

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