A Hero

Oct 24, 2023 — A beautiful, intense woman stands in a large, dusky room, lit only by an oil lamp, her eyes wide in concern and something not far from panic, her eyebrows tremulously registering every thought and fear that passes through her mind,...

Aug 16, 2023 — This month’s roundup spotlights summer blockbusters, historical perspectives, and dazzling costumes.

Jul 19, 2023 — Next month, we’re celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of hip-hop and featuring collections of films by Kay Francis, Roger Corman, and Lou Ye.

Mar 4, 2022 — Freud and Jung make surprise appearances in this week’s roundup.

Dec 15, 2020 — One day in the late 1990s, when I was a young staff member at an art and media magazine, my boss asked me to interview an esteemed creative director of an ad agency. A few months earlier, that same magazine...

May 4, 2020 — “You’ve never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you, Diz?”Jean Arthur asks this poetic, expressively peculiar question of Thomas Mitchell in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and we understand her yearning for truth...

Oct 11, 2019 — Highlighted this week are an alternative history, the state of the documentary, and the influence of Antonioni and Pialat.

Oct 2, 2019 — Retrospectives in New York and on the Criterion Channel mark the hundredth birthday of the pioneering filmmaker.

May 31, 2019 — Cannes 2019 Cannes has been top dog in the festival world as long as anyone can remember. It was originally set to launch in 1939 as a conscious political reply by liberal democracy to the success of Mussolini in establishing...

Apr 30, 2019 — In 1979, at the age of twenty-eight, Gillian Armstrong shot to international prominence with her first feature, My Brilliant Career, a beautifully realized tale, set in the turn-of-the-century Australian bush, about a young woman with ambitions of becoming a writer....