Life Itself

Jan 9, 2019 — There’s a certain tall-tale quality to Sandi Tan’s life. When the California-based filmmaker was growing up in Singapore in the 1980s and ’90s, movies were a powerful way of experiencing the world beyond her small native country, a place she...

Jan 8, 2019 — “Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated” is how Abbas Kiarostami once described his late turn toward minimalism. While the Iranian director was known for the intricate, metatextual playfulness of his work, he also spent much of his career...

Jan 7, 2019 — Critics are fine with the actors who’ve won Golden Globes this year—as for the films they appear in, not so much.

Dec 29, 2018 — Polls and ballots, lists and considered reflections give shape to the year that was.

Dec 18, 2018 — Whatever your cinephilic interest—cinematography, acting, criticism—there’ll likely be a new book to take with you into the holidays.

Dec 14, 2018 — In this week’s round: Tarkovsky and Eisenstein, Godard and Varda, and one of the most consequential television programs of all time.

Dec 11, 2018 — As critics list their favorite television shows of 2018, we take a look at some of the most notable writing about a few of their picks.

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

Nov 27, 2018 — With The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles created a model of period filmmaking, lightly deploying historical signifiers while focusing on the haunting power of his actors’ faces.

Nov 26, 2018 — The Magnificent Ambersons In his interviews with Peter Bogdanovich published as This Is Orson Welles, Welles speaks nostalgically of the time he spent with his father in a tranquil enclave of 1920s Illinois, comparing it to “a childhood back in...