Can’t Complain

Jun 1, 2017 — Earlier this spring, Ryuichi Sakamoto gave an exquisitely intimate concert at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Surrounded by a small audience in the venue’s opulent Veterans Room, the renowned Japanese composer was positioned in the center of the...

May 22, 2017 — “Michael Haneke is back to many of his old tricks in Happy End, which enfolds the child psychopathy of Benny’s Video, the bourgeois nightmare of Hidden, the euthanasia theme of Amour, and the racial discomfort of Code Unknown into a...

Feb 20, 2017 — Joan Crawford delivers one of her greatest performances in Michael Curtiz’s unsparing look at class, ambition, and the all-consuming intensity of maternal love.

Oct 5, 2016 — Rock critic Robert Christgau examines the evocative use of three early Leonard Cohen songs in Robert Altman’s brilliant revisionist western.

Sep 21, 2016 — An exhilarating blend of noir and splatter-flick tropes, the Coen brothers’ debut feature established their unique brand of cosmic fatalism.

Nov 5, 2015 — Julien Duvivier’s early sound films offer emotionally rich explorations of life in prewar France.

Jan 26, 2015 — Scenes without endings, sounds without corresponding images, actions without seeming motivation—Lucrecia Martel’s sense-heightening debut offers a cinema of subtraction.

Dec 17, 2014 — Trenchant in its portrayal of gender dynamics, sophisticated in its look at the actor’s life, and, of course, hilarious, Tootsie is Hollywood comedy at its finest.

Dec 10, 2014 — Social satire, women’s melodrama, queer metaphor, or horror movie? Todd Haynes’s elusive masterpiece is all of these and none of them.

Oct 2, 2014 — The following is a chapter on The Innocents from cinematographer Freddie Francis’s memoir, The Straight Story from “Moby Dick” to “Glory.” It is reproduced here courtesy of Scarecrow Press. The last picture I worked on as a cinematographer in my...