Up to a Certain Point

Dec 12, 2019 — Almost from the moment it arrived on screens in early 2006, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy was celebrated as a new milestone for American cinema, even an expression of independent filmmaking’s delayed arrival at maturity. In relating its deceptively simple tale...

Nov 26, 2018 — The Magnificent Ambersons “Plus one and minus one equal nothing. So you mean I’m nothing in particular?” —Isabel “Remember you very well indeed.” —George “George, you never saw me before in your life!” —Eugene What is this cult I signed up...

Jun 29, 2015 — This work of hallucinatory lyricism was one of the final and freest expressions of the rule-flouting New Wave movement in Czechoslovakia.

Mar 21, 2012 — The famed collaboration between director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, which, with its distinctive combination of effective melodrama and a wild, powerful visual style, helped make Kalatozov the most successful Soviet cinematic export of his generation, in fact spanned...

May 17, 2011 — “There was a strong influence of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal throughout this film,” director Masahiro Shinoda would later remember of his 1964 squid-ink noir Pale Flower, made in the days when his career as a filmmaker and founding figure of...

Apr 28, 2023 — One of Britain’s most celebrated playwrights talks about bringing her uncompromising exploration of racism and resistance to the screen.

Aug 10, 2017 — “Stylish swagger goes full-tilt boogie in Let the Corpses Tan (Laissez bronzer les cadavres), the latest delirious exercise in lovingly retro pastiche from Brussels-based writer-directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani,” begins Neil Young in the Hollywood Reporter. “Having amassed a...

Feb 2, 2004 — A story about defeat and failure, Robert Bresson’s masterpiece is a milestone in the slow process of the liberation of postwar French cinema

Jul 15, 2022 — This week we head back to 1981 with Reverse Shot, to the 1970s with Straub-Huillet, and to the 1960s with Marco Bellocchio.

Apr 24, 2026 — Great writing this week on Maurice Pialat, Paul Newman, Johnnie To, Mark Fisher, and wrestlers.