The American Friend

Nov 19, 2020 — For most of my life, makeover sequences in film comedies held an irresistible allure. The mousy young woman who realizes her own inner and outer (but mostly outer) beauty after receiving the attentions of the right man (or the right...

Aug 27, 2020 — Writer, director, editor, and coproducer Sandoval stars as an undocumented Filipina drawn into a relationship with an unstable man.

Jun 9, 2020 — A couple walk down a cacophonous street in New York. They’re bundled in coats—wrapped up in their own worlds. She is incandescent with joy, talking about her cadre of close friends and their regular meetings. He wears a resigned face,...

May 12, 2020 — In the early 1950s, director John Sturges, then under contract at MGM, read a condensed version of Paul Brickhill’s memoir The Great Escape, which details the mass escape of downed fighter pilots from the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III...

Feb 11, 2020 — How might four history-making Oscars impact movies from here on out?

Sep 30, 2019 — At first glance, Jean-Pierre Melville’s body of work might seem to display a schizophrenic split between two currents or tendencies. The first is in total symbiosis with the history of France and is rooted in the filmmaker’s own life, notably...

May 16, 2019 — Initial response to Silverstein’s first fiction feature is ranging from warm to very warm indeed.

Apr 3, 2019 — This month’s round features Dalí’s Marx Brothers movie, Bergman family drama, Welles’s unpublished play, and more.

Feb 8, 2019 — Norman Jewison and Ray Charles, Jules Feiffer and Alain Renais, and Jia Zhangke and Apple.

Jul 19, 2018 — Deep Dives A tough, dirty gangster picture that delivers the requisite payload of violence and bastardly behavior, Giuliano Montaldo’s Gli intoccabili (released in the U.S. as Machine Gun McCain) is also a landmark in the story of John Cassavetes and his ragtag repertory...