School of Life

Oct 5, 2017 — The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2017 has been awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro, “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world,” announces the Swedish Academy. Ishiguro is probably...

Sep 30, 2017 — Serge Bozon’s Mrs. Hyde premiered in Locarno in August, when we gathered a first round of reviews. It screens once more tomorrow (October 1) as part of the New York Film Festival’s Main Slate, and Bozon and his star, Isabelle...

Sep 2, 2017 — Remembering Jerry Lewis in a piece for the Guardian, Martin Scorsese recalls working with him on King of Comedy: “Jerry Langford was an uncomfortable role for him to play, because he was skirting the edges of his own life in...

Dec 18, 2016 — Imogen Sara Smith examines the tensions between tradition and modernity reflected in two silent crime films by Yasujiro Ozu and Tomu Uchida.

Sep 20, 2016 — Cloaked in chiaroscuro and innuendo, this stylistically innovative creature feature leaves its greatest horrors to the imagination.

Jul 17, 2014 — When I was in high school in the late ’70s, one of my closest pals was a semiprofessional magician. A top-flight pianist as well, Charles was making some tidy sums as an entertainer in restaurants and clubs around North Jersey...

Oct 23, 2013 — If there’s one quality that separates John Cassavetes’s movies from almost everybody else’s, it’s the density of detail in the storytelling. His films need to be read closely, from beginning to end. There are no lulls with Cassavetes, no lapses...

Oct 22, 2009 — Almost a decade ago, Catherine Breillat, one of contemporary cinema’s great provocateurs, gave us Fat Girl (À ma soeur!), a disturbing and graphic look at the pitfalls of adolescent sexuality from the point of view of a pair of young sisters....

Nov 19, 2008 — My first trip to Paris took place inside the darkened cafeteria of Warnsdorfer Elementary School in East Brunswick, New Jersey. A few times each year, the entire student body was brought together to watch movies cast from a rickety 16...

Oct 24, 2005 — When Samurai Rebellion premiered, on May 27, 1967, the original Japanese title was Joiuchi—hairyo tsuma shimatsu, which means something like Rebellion—Receive the Wife. This title indicates the two concerns of the film: the social impact of an unheard-of act of...