Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary

Aug 11, 2020 — I’ve often found that the most successful short films and short stories apply what Ernest Hemingway called the “iceberg theory,” distilling a larger narrative into a very specific moment that allows audiences to infer the bigger picture in their own...

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...

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...

Feb 12, 2019 — In a stark, forbidding prison, a nun ascends a staircase, framed by vertical bars, and walks down a corridor, unlocking cell doors. Women start coming out; two of them quarrel. Smoking on her bunk, one inmate sighs when told she...

Mar 14, 2018 — “How could I have written a longish book on 1940s Hollywood and have devoted so little space to Casablanca?” asks David Bordwell. The book is Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling, and “I suppose I neglected Warners’ evergreen...

Feb 28, 2018 — A few days ago, we ran an essay here by Pico Iyer on Satyajit Ray’s The Hero (1966), followed by Meheli Sen’s comments on Uttam Kumar’s performance within the context of his stardom. Iyer has more to say and, writing...

Jan 21, 2018 — “Filmed entirely within an emergency call center, Danish director Gustav Möller’s The Guilty (Den skyldige) is a claustrophobic thriller that finds fascinating ways to transcend, spiritually, its confines,” begins Bilge Ebiri in the Village Voice. “Pretty much the whole film...

Jul 10, 2017 — “While many of my more memorable screenings involved companions and cohorts—seeing Barbarella on a second date with the woman I’d eventually marry; catching a revival of Andrei Rublev with a friend as an elderly Russian lady noisily ate stinky borscht...

May 22, 2017 — “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) isn’t the wittiest or most exciting movie that Noah Baumbach has ever made, but it might just be the most humane,” writes David Ehrlich at IndieWire. “While all of his films have a cutting...

May 22, 2017 — “She is an 88-year-old film directing icon with a two-tone purple rinse,” begins David Jenkins at Little White Lies. “He is a 33-year-old photographer and conceptual artist who likes to wear a silly little trilby hat. Together, they amble around...