Death Watch

Feb 25, 2026 — A survey of Black cinema and memories of watching movies with John Ashbery are among this month’s highlights.

Oct 8, 2024 — An otherworldly exploration of the realm between life and death, this horror masterpiece transcends its genre with its poetic, often unsettling use of fragmentation and discontinuity.

Sep 24, 2024 — Emerging out of the mass death, cultural ferment, and semiotic tumult of the 1990s, this trio of deliriously profane films glares at American youth culture and gives zero shits if it looks back.

Jan 9, 2023 — The films in the Criterion Channel collection Free Jazz chronicle the development of a deeply experimental music that has baffled and enthralled listeners in equal measure.

May 17, 2022 — Juzo Itami’s tragicomic directorial debut has scandalous fun with the Japanese traditions governing death.

Jan 25, 2022 — By repeatedly staging the death of the filmmaker’s father with tragicomic flair, Kirsten Johnson’s hybrid documentary grapples with the realities of dementia and finds grace.

Sep 8, 2020 — Always a lively presence on-screen, Menzel also directed Closely Watched Trains and I Served the King of England.

Jul 31, 2020 — This week we’re reading about Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard, Luchino Visconti, Amy Seimetz, and the cinematic allure of fictional cults.

Jul 14, 2020 — We’d hoped to be making and watching movies in theaters again by now. That’s not happening, so now what?

Feb 19, 2019 — A master at adapting literary classics for the screen, Luchino Visconti made a bold choice in emphasizing the homoerotic undertones in Thomas Mann’s novella.