The Half of It

May 23, 2018 — About halfway through Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (2016), Dr. Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) finds himself in a patch of woods in the middle of the night, crying. It’s a surprisingly vulnerable moment for a protagonist who is usually all business. We’re...

Dec 21, 2017 — With D. A. Pennebaker’s groundbreaking concert film, rock music solidified its status as a universal language.

Sep 2, 2015 — In preparation for our upcoming release of D. A. Pennebaker’s groundbreaking 1967 Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back, we recently visited the legendary filmmaker at his home, where he introduced us to an old friend. Photo by Grant Delin That’s...

Jan 5, 2015 — Who is Tootsie, anyway?

Jun 25, 2014 — Hearts and Minds is the classic antiwar documentary film of the Vietnam era. It was released in 1974, one year after the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam and a year before North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front...

Jan 24, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki first read Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème in 1976. The highly influential 1851 book—an episodic novel about a group of starving artists that also inspired Puccini’s 1896 opera La bohème—captured the Finnish filmmaker’s imagination and,...

Sep 18, 2013 — This chapter about director Richard Linklater’s beginnings, from the 1996 book Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema, is by the former producer’s representative, creator and host of IFC’s Split Screen, and...

Feb 19, 2013 — Photo by Grant Delin, 2012 Today we mourn the loss of Donald Richie, writer, critic, curator, cultural explorer, and my friend since 2001. I met him when he came to New York to record a commentary track for our DVD...

Jan 8, 2013 — The two movies that opened the door to “youth culture” in Hollywood, The Graduate and Easy Rider, were milestones, to be sure. But can it really be said that they were milestones in the art of cinema? “I think The...

Jan 2, 2013 — Performances Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Still Walking is an exquisitely lived-in portrayal of family life. It takes place largely over the course of one day, at the home of the aging Yokoyamas, Toshiko (Kirin Kiki) and Kyohei (Yoshio Harada), as they welcome...