Touch Wood

Oct 17, 2023 — I. “Morbid Cinema” On October 10, 1962, there appeared a brief paragraph from the Associated Press: “Tod Browning, eighty-two, who directed scores of movies between 1917 and 1939, is dead. He succumbed Saturday after an illness, and no funeral plans...

Sep 8, 2023 — The festival launches new films by Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Harmony Korine, and Ibrahim Nash’at.

Jul 25, 2023 — A master class in dramatic tension and pacing, Carl Franklin’s neonoir masterpiece explores the desperate energy and desperate deeds that fuel real crime.

May 23, 2023 — In one of her most moving explorations of youth, Céline Sciamma offers the gently radical and reparative chance for a mother and child to share a perspective.

Oct 26, 2022 — Deep Dives Every elliptical pleasure of Michael Laughlin’s Strange Behavior (a.k.a. Dead Kids, 1981)—the flattened post–Twilight Zone affect, the tableaux evoking Technicolor footage faded like old Polaroids, a host of cross-pollinated genre kinks—suggests outmoded code that’s been surreptitiously updated. Embracing...

Sep 28, 2022 — Sarah Maldoror’s only completed narrative feature tracks the Angolan struggle for independence from Portugal and reckons with the interlocking systems of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

Jul 13, 2022 — Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating boxing opus—one of the last films on which he enjoyed unequivocal studio support—emerged from a Hollywood in transition.

May 31, 2022 — The jury gave awards to nearly half the competition, but some critical favorites missed out.

May 26, 2022 — The top awards at this year’s Critics’ Week go to stories of young people with uncertain futures.

Mar 11, 2022 — Deep Dives There’s an entire realm of children’s entertainment that survives mostly on the margins of collective consciousness. The average person is unlikely to know Michael Sporn’s name, but if they are of a certain age, they almost certainly have...