To Be or Not to Be

Jul 16, 2018 — In this essay originally published in the New Yorker, Roger Angell hails Ron Shelton’s comic ode to baseball as one of the few movies to capture the essence of the sport.

Sep 11, 2016 — On his seventy-sixth birthday, we’re celebrating the work of Hollywood enfant terrible Brian De Palma, whose iconoclastic five-decade career has encompassed an astonishing array of genres, including erotic thriller, war drama, and science fiction.

Feb 9, 2016 — Jan Troell’s narration of one Swedish couple’s arduous journey to America portrays the migratory quality of marriage—of “finding that you think of this person who is not you, or this place that is not the land of your birth, as...

Aug 30, 2012 — In the 1960s, Mailer, already a literary legend, was inspired by the avant-garde film movement to take a stab at his own, anti-Warholian underground cinema.

Apr 25, 2011 — In 1981, the legendary critic went all out for Blow Out, which she thought was De Palma's most mature work to date.

Oct 9, 2008 — Lola Montès, Max Ophuls’s final film and some would say greatest masterpiece, opened today in New York and Los Angeles in what is being touted as the definitive restoration. Butchered by its producers and a flop on initial release in...

Sep 17, 2007 — Today we are used to seeing dance artistically presented on television and in movies—these films about Martha Graham helped to make that happen.

May 26, 2003 — Embracing the world while pretending to sneer at it, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s crime film is rich, deep, and wily.

May 9, 1994 — The importance of Two English Girls lies in its sheer vitality. The film is an extraordinary cinematic conjuring trick in which Truffaut draws the viewer both physically and visually into his own personal pleasures. He does this on a multitude...

Sep 11, 2026 — An eclectic mix this week: Iranian cinema, archival deep dives, Neptune Frost, Pauline Kael, and It Ends.