One Hour with You

Mar 3, 2021 — Alexandre Koberidze’s What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? and Dénes Nagy’s Natural Light compete at the Berlinale.

Dec 8, 2020 — Frederick Wiseman’s documentary ranks high in the latest round of lists of the best films and television of 2020.

Jul 21, 2020 — Consider this an afterword to Taste of Cherry (1997), the feature that brought its director, Abbas Kiarostami, to full international prominence, after it became the first Iranian movie to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (where it...

Jun 22, 2020 — Songbook At first it’s just one of many Fellini-esque dances: a band switches to an upbeat tune, Nino Rota’s “Caracalla’s (La Bersagliera),” and a previously dour party becomes an impromptu circle of ecstatic movement. Though overshadowed in La dolce vita...

Nov 11, 2019 — Dark Passages I. Vacancy All the rooms are the same. There is always a skeletal bedstead with an uninviting mattress; a scuffed chest of drawers; a grimy little sink; a naked light bulb; bare walls on which the memory of...

Oct 16, 2019 — Deep Dives “I have a feeling that the really crucial moments in a film should be wordless,” the Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray once said. He was speaking of his 1964 masterpiece Charulata, whose action consists largely of soulful looks passing...

Sep 27, 2019 — Charlie Chaplin gave The Circus (1928) one of his favorite themes, some of his most sublime gags, and an incomparably poignant ending. It’s a hugely personal work, which draws on moments from his whole career, from his early stage work...

Feb 25, 2019 — Turns out, not everyone loves a winner.

Oct 2, 2018 — The past weighs heavily on the present in Long Day’s Journey into Night, Ash Is Purest White, and A Family Tour.

Aug 31, 2018 — And a pillar of American film criticism falls.