To Each His Own

May 15, 2000 — Twenty-five years after its first appearance, Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute remains the finest screen version of an opera ever produced. Shot in sumptuous color by Sven Nykvist, and featuring some of the finest Nordic singers of the day,...

Dec 31, 1999 — As a tour de force of screen acting, Autumn Sonata stands unchallenged as the finest work of Ingmar Bergman’s last few years as a movie director. Fanny and Alexander may have won the Oscars, but Autumn Sonata represents Bergman’s chamber...

Jan 28, 1991 — The following review, one of the most renowned in the history of film criticism, appeared in The New Yorker magazine on October 28, 1972. It is reprinted with the permission of the author, Pauline Kael. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in...

Sep 28, 2026 — Shirley Clarke, Orson Welles, George Cukor, Lynne Ramsay, Olivier Assayas, Bree Daniels . . . quite a roundup this month.

Sep 25, 2026 — David Lynch keeps reentering the conversation, and so does Pauline Kael. Plus: A roundup of recent newsletters.

Sep 21, 2026 — A Japanese-television phenomenon that sparked a boom in anime production and fandom, Hideaki Anno’s magnum opus is a mind-bending mix of kinetic action, sci-fi spectacle, and introspective human drama.

Sep 14, 2026 — May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown wins the Golden Lion, and NAZA, codirected by Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, wins a Special Jury Prize.

Aug 28, 2026 — Revisiting work by Whit Stillman, Frederick Wiseman, Nathaniel Dorsky—and lots of road movies.

Aug 25, 2026 — The pioneering husband-and-wife duo transformed the field of Japanese nonfiction cinema with their portraits of spectacular, edgy personalities and collectives under duress.

Aug 14, 2026 — Fine writing on Powell and Pressburger, James Gray, Catherine Breillat, and Richard Linklater—plus: Isabelle Huppert on Claude Chabrol.