The Breath

Aug 15, 2023 — Wayne Wang is perhaps best known as a cinematic chameleon. Working both inside and outside of the Hollywood ecosystem, he has consistently demonstrated a restless curiosity about a wide range of cultures and filmic traditions. In addition to directing two...

Jul 16, 2019 — When Alan J. Pakula began preparing for the production of Klute (1971), he screened a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films. He looked at Notorious and admired Ingrid Bergman’s work. He revisited Strangers on a Train, struggling with the climactic merry-go-round...

Aug 31, 2011 — French sociologist Roger Caillois proposed that every form of human recreation could be placed somewhere on a continuum between two terms: ludus and paidia. The first of these represents games defined almost wholly by their rule systems. Crossword puzzles and...

Mar 15, 2022 — A captivatingly unclassifiable leading man in the 1980s, Hurt often returned to his first passion—the theater.

Aug 1, 2024 — Philadelphia’s showcase of work by Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists opens today and runs through the weekend.

Nov 25, 2020 — A camera dollies down a hallway into the interior of a nursing home: the opening of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019) prompts a foreboding that seeps into all that follows. The Five Satins’ 1956 doo-wop classic “In the Still of...

Jun 8, 2020 — A patient and observant analyst of films and their stars, the playwright and critic has passed away. He was ninety.

Oct 23, 2013 — If there’s one quality that separates John Cassavetes’s movies from almost everybody else’s, it’s the density of detail in the storytelling. His films need to be read closely, from beginning to end. There are no lulls with Cassavetes, no lapses...

Apr 3, 2024 — This year’s edition is bookended by two very New York movies.

Feb 16, 2024 — This week brings fresh writing on Edward Yang and David Cronenberg, a talk with Wim Wenders, and a bundle of lists.