On the Beat

May 3, 2021 — A German mother travels to Hong Kong in search of her son—and herself—in one of the highlights of this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Mar 26, 2021 — Today’s round features writing on Catherine Breillat, William Greaves, Thom Andersen, and Patricia Highsmith.

Mar 24, 2021 — Performances By the time The Manchurian Candidate was released in 1962, Frank Sinatra had been on American screens and in American hearts for nearly two decades. His bobby-soxers had been displaced by Elvis fans, who had been displaced by Beatles...

Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...

Jan 12, 2021 — Nomadland has triumphed on the first big night of awards season.

Oct 30, 2020 — In his tension-filled, black-comic Oscar winner, Bong Joon Ho masterfully mixes tones and subverts genres in order to shine a harsh light on the mechanisms that maintain class inequality.

Oct 5, 2020 — Three of the five stand-alone features in this anthology series have premiered in New York, and the reviews have been rock solid.

Sep 21, 2020 — After opening TIFF, this dynamic yet unobtrusive documentation of the hit Broadway show now heads to the NYFF.

Sep 9, 2020 — Performances In the mid-1960s, the Bengali director Mrinal Sen reportedly accused his contemporary Satyajit Ray of selling out. “Mrinal said—now he has sunk to the level of using a matinee idol!” Ray would later laugh to his biographer, Andrew Robinson....

Jul 7, 2020 — The renowned composer of well over four hundred film scores was equally at home in avant experimentation and tear-jerking sentimentality.