While at War

Dec 12, 2019 — Almost from the moment it arrived on screens in early 2006, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy was celebrated as a new milestone for American cinema, even an expression of independent filmmaking’s delayed arrival at maturity. In relating its deceptively simple tale...

Jan 29, 2018 — This weekend was about the Grammys, of course, but it wasn’t all about the Grammys. As Guy Lodge reports for Variety, Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri “may be proving the most critically divisive of this year’s top Oscar...

Dec 23, 2017 — Let’s first take a quick break from 2017 and look back fifty years (as I suspect we’ll be doing a lot in 2018). For Little White Lies, Justine Smith has been rifling through various archives and has put together a...

Sep 4, 2017 — “Lebanon director Samuel Maoz went in a risky direction by making a film as different and daring as Foxtrot,” writes Jay Weissberg for Variety, “and his boldness pays off in ways that make one reach for superlatives. Not content to...

Jun 19, 2012 — Steven Soderbergh delivers a poignant psychological portrait of the late Spalding Gray in this deftly structured documentary.

Jul 19, 2004 — In Yasujiro Ozu’s hands, the extended-family drama widened its focus to encompass friends, neighbors, and employers.

Oct 31, 2023 — With the full force of her imagination, director Nikyatu Jusu examines the complicated nature of Black motherhood, as well as the importance of Black communion as an antidote to racial oppression.

Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...

Oct 3, 2019 — The director reunites with writer Jonathan Raymond and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt for a quiet tale set in the Oregon Territory of the 1820s.

Aug 5, 2019 — At the San Francisco Silent Film Festival you can expect to see many great, even perfect, treasures of cinema, popular classics, and critical favorites. At the age of twenty-four, the event has become increasingly central to the silent cinema calendar—one...