The Secret

Feb 14, 2018 — Until the Oscars are presented on March 4, it’s not yet too late to be looking back at the best of 2017. The Village Voice has polled over a hundred critics, and Phantom Thread has come out on top with...

Sep 26, 2017 — This collection of excerpts from interviews with Stan Brakhage illuminates the evolution of his philosophy of film through his career.

Jul 22, 2015 — Stephen Frears brings a playful and shimmering cinematic quality to Hanif Kureishi’s multilayered script about a Pakistani immigrant community in Margaret Thatcher–era London.

Jun 27, 2014 — The American war in Vietnam was officially divided into two halves: the military war and “the other war: the war to win the hearts and minds of the people,” which gives Peter Davis’s 1974 documentary its title. Whereas the aim...

Oct 24, 2005 — Kihachi Okamoto’s subversion of the samurai movie possesses the same gritty, stark realism with regard to imagery and body count, yet the tone is decidedly comic.

Jun 23, 2003 — A very brief history of the seminal documentary by Alain Resnais

Jan 8, 2019 — “Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated” is how Abbas Kiarostami once described his late turn toward minimalism. While the Iranian director was known for the intricate, metatextual playfulness of his work, he also spent much of his career...

Feb 28, 2011 — In 1969, director Alexander Macken­drick retired from the film industry and became founding dean of the film school at the newly established California Institute of the Arts. Passionately interested in the pedagogy of cinema (“Film writing and directing cannot be...

Jan 14, 2025 — In this digressive, intensely interior masterpiece, Jean Eustache mines the dramas of his past romances while also capturing the disillusionment of young Parisians in the aftermath of May 1968.

Jan 13, 2025 — Toronto’s retrospective showcases an oeuvre that ranges from Fists in the Pocket (1965) to Kidnapped (2023).