Anyone But You

Feb 5, 2014 — Performances We don’t often talk about documentaries as featuring performances. But consider the highly performative people at the centers of Grey Gardens, General Idi Amin Dada, and last year’s The Act of Killing, or even the seemingly more modest souls...

Nov 11, 2013 — A boldly silent film in the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece has a grace that has never been equaled.

Sep 25, 2013 — Roberto Rossellini’s tale of modern sainthood demonstrates the importance of opening oneself to the wider world.

Sep 17, 2013 — The author sheds some light on the fascinating life of the American scriptwriter behind Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan.

Jul 23, 2013 — Asked by French journalists in a 2001 interview what recent films he most admired, Brian De Palma named Ang Lee’s 1997 The Ice Storm. It was surprising to hear one of the leaders of a filmmaking revolution that aimed at...

May 28, 2013 — Mike Leigh’s breakthrough is a funny film about serious things, and an emotional and slyly political take on consumer culture.

Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...

Jun 27, 2012 — The warrior and philosopher protagonist of The Samurai Trilogy, Musashi Miyamoto, was a real-life seventeenth-century figure. Here, the translator of Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings tells us about this fascinating man and his principles of swordplay and spirituality.

May 25, 2012 — The following article by the filmmaker himself originally appeared in the German newspaper Die Filmwoche on May 20, 1931.

Mar 27, 2012 — Written in five or six days in 1941, in a seaside hotel where he had gone to get away from the Blitz, and by all accounts scarcely revised before being mounted some six weeks later, Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit became...