The Family Plan

Nov 6, 2019 — Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker’s Town Bloody Hall (1979) is one of the highlights in a program of over 300 films.

Oct 23, 2017 — The week starts off with a new trailer (embedded below), poster, and, via Jordan Raup at the Film Stage, an official synopsis for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread:Set in the glamour of 1950s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel...

Nov 19, 2020 — For most of my life, makeover sequences in film comedies held an irresistible allure. The mousy young woman who realizes her own inner and outer (but mostly outer) beauty after receiving the attentions of the right man (or the right...

Oct 13, 2020 — Some critics are amused, others aren’t, but everyone agrees that Michelle Pfeiffer is outstanding.

Nov 29, 2017 — The National Board of Review, established in 1909 and now boasting over 100 members, has named Steven Spielberg’s The Post as the best film of 2017. The Post won’t open until December 22 and reviews are embargoed until this coming...

Mar 7, 2017 — With his unique blend of British realism and romantic fatalism, director Andrew Haigh exposes the quiet desperation at the heart of a long marriage.

Nov 24, 2015 — In Dont Look Back, legendary documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker employs his revolutionary new camera and Direct Cinema style to capture the multiple essences and contradictions of a young Bob Dylan making his way across England in 1965.

Oct 4, 2023 — Night has fallen in London, but the streets still teem with people. Through a second-story window, we watch as an elderly Jewish man who lives over a shop is stabbed to death and his rooms are set on fire. We...

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...

Sep 22, 2020 — Francesco Rosi’s film Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) is based on Carlo Levi’s novelistic memoir of the same name, which became an instant classic of Italian literature when it appeared at the end of World War II, in 1945. In...