The Watch

Oct 16, 2020 — First Person One of the internet’s more delightful creations is a compilation of Aaron Sorkin quotes assembled by a man named Kevin Porter in 2012. Its purpose is to expose the screenwriter’s propensity for repetition. Some of the examples, plucked...

Sep 22, 2020 — Francesco Rosi’s film Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) is based on Carlo Levi’s novelistic memoir of the same name, which became an instant classic of Italian literature when it appeared at the end of World War II, in 1945. In...

Aug 23, 2019 — After more than three decades in front of the camera, Natasha Lyonne understands a thing or two about what makes on-screen charisma. Previously best known for her early-career performances in films like Slums of Beverly Hills and But I’m a Cheerleader, she has in...

Aug 6, 2019 — Once, in 1977, Werner Herzog read a news item about a volcano that was supposed to erupt in Guadeloupe and one man living there who refused to evacuate with the rest of the island’s population. Herzog being Herzog, he immediately...

Jul 17, 2018 — Without doubt, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape struck a nerve when it was released in 1989. Astonishingly, it still does today. Among the most storied of American independent films, it debuted at the U.S. Film Festival (soon to be renamed the...

Jun 29, 2016 — Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria brings together Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart to play out a psychologically complex relationship between two women. Binoche, once again teaming up with Assayas, after starring in his 2008 drama Summer Hours, is Maria...

Dec 28, 2015 — In June, we lost the inimitable American writer James Salter. The author, one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, also had a career as a Hollywood screenwriter—which included penning Michael Ritchie’s 1969 Olympic skiing drama Downhill Racer. Our...

Apr 6, 2015 — In 2004 and 2005, the makers of Hoop Dreams, in collaboration with Criterion, revisited the documentary’s principle figures, Arthur Agee and William Gates, along with their families, to see what had been happening in their lives since the film’s premiere...

Oct 30, 2014 — Repertory PicksNovember 1 may be All Saints’ Day, but at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, the demons will still be coming out to play. That’s the day the theater is showing Carl Theodor Dreyer’s poetic horror masterpiece...

May 21, 2013 — It’s tough to tell where reality ends and fiction begins in Haskell Wexler’s deft chronicle of a turbulent era.