The Beautiful Story

May 4, 2020 — “You’ve never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you, Diz?”Jean Arthur asks this poetic, expressively peculiar question of Thomas Mitchell in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and we understand her yearning for truth...

Apr 5, 2018 — “Just a few years in and DOC10 is already a must-hit stop on the festival circuit for the year’s best documentaries,” writes Lisa Trifone in the Third Coast Review. “The brainchild of Chicago Media Project and head programmer Anthony Kaufman,...

Feb 9, 2018 — Catching up with notable recent interviews, we naturally have to begin with the one that’s sparked so much crossfire for a full week now. Last October, Uma Thurman declined to comment on the #MeToo movement because “when I have spoken...

Dec 8, 2017 — “We live in an age in which articles are written daily on the need for ‘checking out’ of online culture, so that we may disconnect from the bombardment of grotesqueries that keep us in an emotional tailspin,” writes Chuck Bowen,...

Oct 3, 2017 — In the print edition of the current issue of Film Comment, we find Luca Guadagnino saying that “the true generator of the movies I try to make is Jean Renoir, and A Day in the Country is really the alpha...

May 2, 2017 — It was a cold January morning, with biting winds coming off the Seine, when I stopped by the Librairie du Cinéma du Panthéon during a break from working on our upcoming release of Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy. This film-specialty bookstore...

Jan 23, 2017 — In his radical debut feature, Ousmane Sembène reveals the agony of the postcolonial experience through the story of a Senegalese migrant abused by her French employers.

Sep 23, 2015 — Bruce Beresford draws on a controversial episode of Australian colonial history from 1901 to create an electrifying drama that questions the moral certitude of war.

Jul 23, 2013 — Asked by French journalists in a 2001 interview what recent films he most admired, Brian De Palma named Ang Lee’s 1997 The Ice Storm. It was surprising to hear one of the leaders of a filmmaking revolution that aimed at...

Nov 28, 2010 — “What we need are good old American—and that’s not to be confused with European—Art Films.” So declared the then twenty-nine-year-old beatnik Method actor Dennis Hopper in an unpublished 1965 manifesto. “The whole damn country’s one big real place to utilize...