Work

Feb 28, 2014 — The Great Beauty, which is up for best foreign-language film at Sunday’s Academy Awards, feels at times like a glorious throwback to a time when art-house cinema reigned. Feeling nostalgic for that era, when films by the great directors of world...

Feb 5, 2014 — Performances We don’t often talk about documentaries as featuring performances. But consider the highly performative people at the centers of Grey Gardens, General Idi Amin Dada, and last year’s The Act of Killing, or even the seemingly more modest souls...

Jan 28, 2014 — Among the delights of Aki Kaurismäki’s La vie de bohème are the guest appearances by François Truffaut alter ego Jean-Pierre Léaud and the two-fisted American auteur Samuel Fuller. The former plays an eccentric collector who takes an interest in the...

Jan 27, 2014 — The author’s encounters with the great Indian filmmaker.

Jan 20, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki pays wry tribute to the starving artist in his sad and funny update of Henri Murger’s classic book.

Jan 6, 2014 — Critics commonly describe Throne of Blood (1957) as Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth. While this description is certainly not untrue, the film is much more than a direct cinematic translation of a literary text. Kurosawa’s movie is a brilliant synthesis...

Nov 12, 2013 — Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig create a luminous, romantic portrait of a young woman looking for fulfillment in New York City.

Nov 11, 2013 — A boldly silent film in the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece has a grace that has never been equaled.

Nov 6, 2013 — Samuel Fuller and Vincent Price would seem to make an incongruous pair. The director’s gritty, unaffected sensibility might seem antithetical to the actor’s lofty, melodramatic approach to performance. But Price is delightful as the protagonist in Fuller’s second film, The...

Nov 5, 2013 — The author’s colorful interactions with the famously crusty filmmaker.