Before the Fall

Sep 16, 2022 — The trailblazing and idiosyncratic filmmaker discusses her two newly restored shorts, her childhood in Detroit, and her decision to leave the movie industry behind.

Jan 31, 2022 — Movies are about looking, and no one involved in the making of a film is more directly responsible for the frames we look at than a cinematographer, or director of photography. Together with the director, the cinematographer shapes the visual...

Jul 19, 2021 — When Dennis Lehane joked in 2011 that the only real difference between Greek tragedy and noir was that in the former characters fall from great heights and in the latter they drop from the curb, he was pinpointing something simultaneously...

Feb 18, 2021 — We’re reading about Visconti, Fellini, Tom Stoppard, Eartha Kitt, and Anton Walbrook.

May 27, 2020 — Walking, like breathing, is something we do without thinking, an activity so commonplace that pedestrian has as its second meaning uninspired, ordinary, dull. Movies, however, reveal this action as more than just the original mode of getting from here to...

Apr 1, 2020 — Are Snakes Necessary?, an erotically charged tale of revenge and political intrigue, naturally features a nod to Hitchcock.

Sep 18, 2019 — One Scene The way some rock fans talk about the sanctity of live music, you’d think it was a guaranteed path to transcendence. But of course most concerts fall far short of the sublime, and the thrill of breathing in...

Apr 15, 2019 — She was known as “a professional innocent”—until Persona (1966) revealed a complex emotional intelligence.

Feb 1, 2019 — A cast of dolls and a rhino are featured in this year’s award-winners, and Steven Soderbergh has previewed his new film.

Mar 7, 2018 — A Wrinkle in Time, the adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 science fiction classic, “directed by Ava DuVernay from a screenplay by Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell, has been a long time coming,” writes A. O. Scott in the New York...