To Be or Not to Be

Dec 5, 2023 — A tight-lipped stranger arrives in a gold-mining town. After checking into a hotel, he heads to Charlie’s Saloon, one of those gambling palaces with glittering chandeliers and be-feathered hostesses. He is told that Charlie “runs the town” and “owns a...

Aug 28, 2023 — Throughout her four-decade career as a writer and director, Susan Seidelman has told complex stories about unconventional women striving to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-melding films fuse a passion for the pleasures of Hollywood spectacle with a...

Aug 25, 2023 — Between 1960 and 1964, Roger Corman directed eight films loosely derived from Edgar Allan Poe and in all but one case starring Vincent Price: House of Usher (1960) was followed by The Pit and the Pendulum (1961); the omnibus feature...

Aug 14, 2023 — Defying pressure from Iran, Locarno didn’t just screen Ali Ahmadzadeh’s Critical Zone; the festival also gave it its top award.

Jun 8, 2023 — The robust oeuvre features performances from Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Hanna Schygulla, and Ornella Muti.

Feb 22, 2023 — Siblings mourn the parents they’ve lost in new films from Dustin Guy Defa, Philippe Garrel, and Susana Nobre.

Oct 28, 2022 — Iranian cinema, the history of horror, and malevolent conspiracies are on our minds this week.

Jul 28, 2022 — Directing the Monkees in Head and Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, Rafelson was a key figure of the New Hollywood.

Jun 28, 2022 — Boasting a larger-than-life Divine, John Waters’ underground classic finds the sublime in the ridiculous.

Sep 22, 2021 — Writer-director John Huston blasted the fusty pieties that pervaded big-studio filmmaking in the post-Code era, whether as the progenitor of film noir with The Maltese Falcon (1941) or the brainy daredevil who threaded critiques of frontier capitalism, gold lust, and...