This Our Life

Feb 1, 2022 — Douglas Sirk’s 1956 masterpiece is a visceral tragedy that lays bare the spiritual malaise of the ruling class.

Dec 3, 2021 — What do amphetamines, intellectual property, and Sour Belts have in common? They all correspond to a letter of the alphabet that structures the world of Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma, the short-film companion to musician and filmmaker Topaz Jones’s funk-infused...

Oct 18, 2021 — Panah Panahi’s debut feature expertly balances “knockabout humor and slowly tightening tension.”

Jun 9, 2021 — Lois Weber was Hollywood’s leading female director in the 1910s and 1920s. But also: she was one of the great directors of the silent era regardless of gender, a filmmaker of remarkable vision who exerted an exceptional degree of creative...

May 25, 2021 — In Edmund Goulding’s gritty cult classic, Tyrone Power casts off his matinee-idol image to play a conniving carnival barker on the flipside of the American dream.

May 19, 2021 — For the last twenty years—until the pandemic broke my streak—I drove each fall to spend a week at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Before making the trip, I took care to avoid reading anything about the subjects, characters, or...

Dec 15, 2020 — Steve McQueen’s Small Axe has emerged as one of the major cinematic events of the year.

Nov 25, 2020 — A camera dollies down a hallway into the interior of a nursing home: the opening of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019) prompts a foreboding that seeps into all that follows. The Five Satins’ 1956 doo-wop classic “In the Still of...

Jan 17, 2020 — Of all the weird scenes that populate seventies science-fiction cinema, the most bizarre might be in 1971’s The Omega Man. Based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, the film imagines a world in which fallout from a distant war has...

Jan 2, 2020 — Steven Spielberg, Sofia Coppola, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, Chloé Zhao, and Joanna Hogg are among the many directors ready to roll out their latest features.