The Escape

Apr 2, 2021 — More mysteries from Rian Johnson plus notes on forthcoming films from Steven Spielberg, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Alma Har’el, and more.

Jan 28, 2021 — Deep Dives Domestic work offers both an agonizing ennui and the satisfaction of a necessary task being completed. In the 1981 documentary Clotheslines, filmmaker Roberta Cantow mines these two moods, as well as the subtler emotions that fill the distance...

Jan 21, 2020 — One of the lesser-known films in Godard’s extraordinary run of 1960s masterpieces, this severe, angular thriller was the director’s first foray into the political territory that would prove so essential to his later work.

Dec 17, 2018 — Secrets from the past are always surfacing in melodramas, altering or illuminating the landscape of the present. So it seems fitting that director John M. Stahl, one of Hollywood’s great masters of melodrama, had a past that is only now...

Jun 26, 2018 — Watch the new trailer for this rarely seen but deeply influential landmark of independent cinema.

Apr 3, 2018 — A little over a month ago now, we posted Marvel mon amour, a video by Daniel Raim in which Stan Lee looked back on working with his good friend Alain Resnais (above with Olga Georges-Picot in Cannes in 1968) on...

Dec 27, 2017 — Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve lost some writers who’ve made unique contributions to film criticism. At Film Studies for Free, Catherine Grant has posted an entry in memory of “radical film and media scholar” Chuck Kleinhans. “Along with...

Sep 4, 2017 — Alfred Hitchcock achieved Oscar-winning success with this psychological thriller, a tumultuous collaboration with producer David O. Selznick.

Aug 24, 2017 — Cineaste has posted selections from its fiftieth anniversary issue, along with a round of web exclusives. Louis Menashe, professor emeritus at Polytechnic Institute of New York University and author of Moscow Believes in Tears: Russians and Their Movies, tells the...

Jul 30, 2017 — “Everybody knows what’s wrong with Hollywood—the vacuous parade of tentpole blockbusters; the refusal to diversify both in front of and behind the camera; the confusion in the face of disruptions by Netflix and Amazon; the single-minded lust for the 13-year-old-male...