City Life

Mar 24, 2014 — Rome is as exquisite as it is suffocating in Paolo Sorrentino’s profound tale of contemporary entropy.

Nov 2, 2009 — The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!—Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first it’s not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a...

Nov 19, 2007 — Akira Kurosawa explores criminal machismo in his seventh film, which he felt was his official breakthrough in Japanese cinema.

Jul 11, 2005 — Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story balances realism and fantasy.

Aug 28, 2012 — A frenetic portrait of New York as well as a love story, Paul Fejos’s film captures the odd sensation of being alone in the big city, even when in a crowd.

Aug 19, 2013 — This moving drama about gender, race, and class in 1960s Kolkata is a pioneering work from Satyajit Ray.

May 27, 2026 — When Joachim Trier made his debut in 2006 with the film Reprise, I felt as if a veil had been lifted. There was nothing wrong with Norwegian cinema before Trier’s arrival, but it always seemed to be about someone else,...

Nov 28, 2022 — We’re closing out the year with a gift bag full of screwball comedy favorites, a wagon train of wintry westerns, and a World Cup–ready team of eclectic football movies.

Nov 8, 2022 — In her first film that places a male character front and center, Jane Campion trains her unsparing gaze on the brutality of patriarchal power and the pain of repressed homoerotic desire.

Dec 13, 2021 — When Jessica Beshir embarked on making her debut feature more than a decade ago, she realized she was going to have to get comfortable with the unfamiliar and unknown. Not only did the Mexico-born, Brooklyn-based filmmaker have to learn how...