Trying Times

Jan 9, 2026 — This week: Conversations with Lav Diaz, Mira Nair, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Mar 11, 2020 — One Scene With his Oscar-nominated debut feature, Beasts of the Southern Wild, director Benh Zeitlin brought to the screen a vision of Louisiana that combined the unique flavors and textures of his adopted home state with the magical twists and...

Sep 19, 2005 — When I was a teenage cinephile, in the mid-1970s, Masculin féminin was enormously significant to me. It repre­sented France’s nouvelle vague of the sixties, with its youthful, anarchic spirit of freedom and spontaneity. It was in black and white and...

Nov 23, 2022 — In Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens, the odyssey of a New Jersey transplant trying to survive in Manhattan is accompanied by the music of one of the Garden State’s most iconic punk bands.

Mar 9, 2015 — François Truffaut’s adultery drama is at times corrosively funny and at others frighteningly tense, but it’s always incisive and humane.

Nov 17, 2014 — Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable’s effortless banter is pure magic, but Frank Capra’s comedy is rooted in the reality of the times.