Life in a Year

Nov 5, 2015 — Julien Duvivier’s early sound films offer emotionally rich explorations of life in prewar France.

Jul 17, 2015 — As visually and sociopolitically expansive as it is intimate in its details of a boy’s coming of age, Jan Troell’s film is one of the great cinematic debuts.

Mar 24, 2014 — Rome is as exquisite as it is suffocating in Paolo Sorrentino’s profound tale of contemporary entropy.

Jun 30, 2008 — The idea of self-fashioning—of deliberately taking the raw materials of one’s body and mind and transforming them into a work of art—has been with us at least since the Renaissance. Yet no one, not even Oscar Wilde, has so rigorously...

Nov 12, 2007 — What is left of Berlin Alexanderplatz, this endless canon of the sublime and the trivial, is thus a perpetuum mobile of the human dance of love and death.

Feb 18, 2026 — One of the most versatile and committed actors in cinema, Duvall was also an accomplished writer and director.

Sep 18, 2025 — No movie star was bigger in the 1970s, and he won an Oscar for directing Ordinary People. But Sundance may be his most impactful legacy.

Jun 18, 2025 — Throughout a small but indelible body of work that includes the 1984 neorealist masterpiece Bless Their Little Hearts, the veteran filmmaker has explored how everyday life is lived within structures of power.

Jun 10, 2025 — Sidney Lumet’s lavish adaptation of a Tony Award–winning stage musical combines an ecstatic appreciation of Black artistry with a celebration of freedom and perseverance.

May 30, 2025 — The week wraps with an overlooked gem starring Jamie Lee Curtis, a new issue of Cineaste, and conversations with Lisa Lu and Takashi Miike.