This Happy Life

Sep 3, 2021 — In the thirty-fifth edition of the Italian festival dedicated to restored films, an eclectic lineup underscores the transportive physicality of cinema after a long year stuck at home.

Mar 16, 2021 — In Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974), play is a life force, pleasure a form of liberation. Drawing inspiration from cartoons, Hollywood musicals, and the vaudeville shenanigans of early screen comedy in the vein of Buster Keaton and the Marx...

Jun 9, 2020 — A couple walk down a cacophonous street in New York. They’re bundled in coats—wrapped up in their own worlds. She is incandescent with joy, talking about her cadre of close friends and their regular meetings. He wears a resigned face,...

Jan 16, 2020 — Deep Dives The question that was asked of the great actors and actresses of silent film with the coming of sound was simple: Could they speak? Could they adapt the styles they had developed to the demands of dialogue and...

Sep 17, 2019 — Fusing the melodrama of Douglas Sirk and the ballyhoo of William Castle, John Waters’ sixth feature, Polyester (1981), was a departure from the scrofulous 16 mm mode of production he had made his cult name plying to midnight-movie crowds in...

May 17, 2018 — Gaspar Noé’s nightmare party movie takes the top prize.

Feb 13, 2018 — Lucrecia Martel was at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this year not only to present Zama but also to deliver a masterclass. Giovanni Marchini Camia was there, and reports for Filmmaker: To illustrate her conception of mise en scène, Martel...

Dec 12, 2017 — “Evil is ascendant,” begins Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “The Resistance—an intrepid, multi-everything group whose leaders include a battle-tested woman warrior—has been fighting the good fight for years but is outnumbered and occasionally outmaneuvered. Yes, the latest Star...

Nov 29, 2017 — The Sundance Film Festival, whose 2018 edition will run from January 18 through 28, has announced the lineups for its U.S. Dramatic and Documentary Competitions, World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions, and its Next, Spotlight, Premieres, Documentary Premieres, Midnight, and...

Oct 28, 2017 — We begin with a few translations. Asymptote lives up to its own billing as “the premier site for world literature in translation” with the presentation of Adam Kuplowsky’s renderings in English of some observational work by Yasujiro Ozu. “These three...