The Audience

Apr 15, 1992 — When President Kennedy announced that Ian Fleming’s novels were amongst his favorite bedside reading, the international stage was set for the entrance of a new cinematic character. His name was Bond—James Bond. In 1962, Dr. No burst onto the screen...

Mar 31, 1991 — In Jacques Tati’s final work, the physical borders of spectacle and audience are broken down through a variety of means.

Jan 11, 1989 — Thursday, March 2, 1944—the United States is in its third year of war with the Axis powers. More than 12 million Americans are fighting on various fronts; the German armies are being repulsed at Anzio and the newspapers have large...

Dec 12, 1988 — Singin’ in the Rain is, in the opinion of most contemporary film critics, one of the great movies of the sound era. The mere mention of its title brings a smile to the face of every movie lover, regardless of...

Feb 29, 1988 — Marx Brothers aficionados have argued for years over the relative merits of A Night at the Opera and the “purer” Marx movies such as Duck Soup. Certainly there’s no comparison on a point-by-point basis: Duck Soup is a classic of...

Jun 16, 2026 — The debut in 1998 of Lisa Cholodenko’s first feature film, High Art, was a triumph. The intense mastery of its form and the freshness of its narrative created waves of excitement—from the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo...

May 26, 2026 — Of all the performing arts, stand-up comedy may be the most ephemeral, even more so if the humor is considered dangerous or taboo. Stand-up relies on the charged dynamic between a comedian and an audience, with both sides often bringing...

Apr 14, 2026 — Consider, for a moment, the jewel thief. No, not like the gang that, at the time of this writing, recently robbed the Louvre in Paris, France. Think rather of one you might find in Paris, Paramount. After all, as director...

Dec 13, 2023 — In June 2023—six months after the release of his Oscar-winning, stop-motion, antifascist-fable version of Pinocchio—Guillermo del Toro found himself speaking to an audience at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, an underground-comix-influenced, hand-drawn-looking cartoon...

Nov 29, 2023 — To watch Matt Wolf’s revelatory documentaries is to see life as a moving collage in which the past and present are woven together. Over the course of nine intensely researched and intricately crafted features and shorts, Wolf has combined his passion for...