Life Is Beautiful

Jan 17, 2005 — Along with Touchez pas au grisbi and Le Trou, Casque d’or is now widely recognized as the summit of Jacques Becker’s achievement as a filmmaker.

May 31, 1990 — Isabelle Huppert shot from minor actress to full-fledged French star with a mesmerizing performance as, ironically, a young woman who is incapable of escaping anonymity. In Swiss director Claude Goretta’s elegant, beautifully observed tragedy/character study, Huppert is “Pomme,” a lovely,...

Jul 30, 2026 — Gene Tierney, Robert Kramer, Chantal Akerman, and Alfred Hitchcock are among the many personalities featured this month.

Jul 14, 2026 — In May of 1962, when Martin Ritt arrived in the Texas Panhandle town of Claude to begin filming Hud, he may have sensed that his career was about to change. Hud would be Ritt’s ninth feature but his first personal...

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...

May 19, 2026 — “Last night, I was in the Kingdom of Shadows,” proclaimed Maxim Gorky, writing about an 1896 projection of films by Auguste and Louis Lumière in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. “Suddenly a strange flicker passes through the screen and...

May 20, 2025 — A film about and against everything, this astonishingly original comedy attacks Big Brother, the bomb, and the incipient collapse of our planetary ecosystem, along with the lies that stop us from recognizing all of the above.

Dec 2, 2022 — We’re sorting through the Sight and Sound poll and reading about Paweł Łoziński, the Sankofa Collective, and the first films ever made.

Sep 7, 2022 — The first reviews are in for new films by Martin McDonagh, Joanna Hogg, Emanuele Crialese, and Koji Fukada.

May 25, 2022 — Mira Nair’s sumptuous second feature explores migration, rebellion, and romance across racial borders in the American South.