The Sea

May 21, 2017 — Tonight, Sunday, May 21, 2017, Twin Peaks returns, just as Laura Palmer (may have) predicted it would twenty-five years ago, give or take. Eighteen one-hour episodes, all directed by David Lynch and cowritten with the show’s original co-creator, Mark Frost....

May 20, 2017 — “Custody of a white horse is one of several bones of contention between Bulgarian locals and visiting German laborers in Valeska Grisebach’s Western, a dispute that takes on the most classic symbolic dimension of the traditional oater,” begins Guy Lodge...

May 18, 2017 — Loveless is “two hours of gorgeously gloomy existential despair courtesy of the well-regarded Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev,” writes Justin Chang in the Los Angeles Times. “Often touted as an heir to Tarkovsky, Russian cinema’s other famously austere Andrey, Zvyagintsev previously...

Apr 29, 2017 — With his IFC TV series Split Screen, creator and host John Pierson gave viewers an all-access pass into the idiosyncratic world of independent cinema. Originally aired in 1997, the magazine-format program highlighted America’s most buzzed about young filmmakers and the...

Sep 23, 2016 — Did You See This? To celebrate the beginning of autumn this week, the BFI has published a list of ten films set during the season, including Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, Yasujiro Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon, Wes Anderson’s Rushmore,...

Jul 22, 2016 — Two pieces, written by director King Hu, that were originally published as part of a 1975 press kit for the Cannes Film Festival.

Jun 20, 2016 — School’s out for summer! And what better way to mark this first day of the season than by revisiting Richard Linklater’s classic 1993 teen comedy Dazed and Confused. Set in suburban Texas in 1976 amid a haze of bong smoke...

Jan 19, 2016 — Inside Llewyn Davis takes its protagonist on a Hero’s Journey of characteristically Coen-esque proportions—a voyage at turns serious and comic, and framed by an exquisitely curated selection of folk melodies.

Aug 7, 2014 — Performances Today, the idea that comedian-actor-writer Lily Tomlin possesses dramatic versatility is so received that one might not realize how unexpected it was for audiences to see her in a serious role in Robert Altman’s Nashville in 1975. At that...

May 14, 2014 — The author recalls his meetings and correspondence with the uncompromisingly independent British director.