The Up Series

Jun 6, 2025 — Wes Anderson celebrates Satyajit Ray, Chantal Akerman talks framing, and Callie Hernandez writes about Jonathan Glazer.

May 27, 2025 — A landmark of independent cinema, Charles Burnett’s debut feature captures daily life in Watts, Los Angeles, with a depth and precision that evokes the history of Black American music.

Mar 25, 2025 — Set in a grimy, unglamorous version of Los Angeles, Arthur Penn’s Watergate-era neonoir tells the story of an honorable private eye acutely conscious of living in an era that is the mere shadow of a nobler past.

Mar 18, 2025 — This stellar entry in one of cinema’s greatest monster franchises combines science fiction’s age-old exploration of human arrogance with the full force of cinematic imagination.

Mar 18, 2025 — In what he described as his “first serious drama,” Charlie Chaplin channeled the influence of modernist literature, foreign cinema, and his European travels into a work of striking formal sophistication.

Feb 19, 2025 — Gus Van Sant’s lyrical exploration of addiction and faith—adapted from an autobiographical novel by James Fogle—influenced cinematic drug depictions throughout the nineties and helped to initiate a wave of American independent filmmaking.

Jan 24, 2025 — We’re sampling new issues of Notebook, Senses of Cinema, and 032c and reading about Eisenstein and Charlotte Zwerin.

Jan 21, 2025 — Lynchian may be impossible to define, but you know it when you see it.

Dec 4, 2024 — Before she won acclaim as a pioneering director, the Hollywood icon made her name as a powerfully vivid actor who brought grit and toughness to films by such masters as Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Michael Curtiz.

Nov 19, 2024 — William Wyler’s adaptation of the Broadway musical celebrates the indomitability of vaudeville legend Fanny Brice, embodied by Barbra Streisand in an incandescent and remarkably vulnerable performance.