The Assistant

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...

Dec 12, 2017 — Alexander Payne skewers the absurdities of American politics in this tale of a high-school presidential campaign gone ugly.

Dec 7, 2017 — In the new issue of Film Quarterly, editor B. Ruby Rich argues that cinema and television “are lagging behind those offscreen realities known as world events or, in online parlance, IRW (In Real World). And yes, this is a film...

Nov 9, 2017 — “DOC NYC started in 2010 and is now, at 250 movies and dozens of filmmaker workshops (best in class: ‘Show Me the Money Day’) spread over eight days [November 9 through 16], the biggest and probably best one-stop venue for...

Oct 12, 2017 — Last week, after years of rumors and aborted attempts to bring it to light, Hollywood’s “open secret” finally became a story fit to print. On Thursday, October 5, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey reported for the New York Times that...

Sep 27, 2017 — Filmmaker Allison Anders recalls a story about her time working with the late Harry Dean Stanton on the set of Paris, Texas.

Jun 28, 2017 — New York. “Rapturously received but mysteriously forgotten after its 1964 New York opening, Jacques Becker’s prison drama, Le trou (The Hole), returns, digitally restored, for a week at Film Forum,” begins J. Hoberman in the New York Times. “Becker served...

Nov 15, 2016 — Akira Kurosawa lays bare his deepest fears in this visually astonishing interpretation of folklore, myth, and the director’s own dreams and memories.

Nov 5, 2015 — Julien Duvivier’s early sound films offer emotionally rich explorations of life in prewar France.

Oct 15, 2015 — Arnaud Desplechin stopped by for a visit and dispensed a few of his gems of wisdom.