The Presence

Dec 1, 2019 — This week, we’re giving a lot of thanks for Bette Davis. Two of the films that defined her extraordinary career—the rapturous woman’s picture Now, Voyager and the peerless drama of backstage backstabbing All About Eve—entered the collection on Tuesday. And...

Nov 22, 2019 — Critics are praising the French New Wave icon’s joyous and reflective final film, which hits theaters in New York this week.

Sep 13, 2019 — Lucrecia Martel, Annette Michelson, Satyajit Ray, and Joanna Hogg feature in this week’s round.

Aug 30, 2019 — In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, after being censured for its invasion of Manchuria. Despite this, the majority of Japanese people remained avid consumers of American movies and Western fashion, which exasperated the militarists in power. A...

Oct 29, 2018 — Supporting roles bring potent flavor to classic Hollywood’s darkest genre. In the first installment of a series, Imogen Sara Smith pays tribute to the queen of character actors: Thelma Ritter.

Jul 19, 2018 — Deep Dives A tough, dirty gangster picture that delivers the requisite payload of violence and bastardly behavior, Giuliano Montaldo’s Gli intoccabili (released in the U.S. as Machine Gun McCain) is also a landmark in the story of John Cassavetes and his ragtag repertory...

Jun 11, 2018 — Building on a rich lineage of gothic fairy tales and noirish melodramas, this lavishly stylized curio has an ominous beauty all its own.

Mar 30, 2018 — This spectacular and technically ambitious Hollywood musical is a priceless window onto American pop culture’s view of itself in the 1930s.

Mar 12, 2018 — After Paula Prentiss, who’s recently turned eighty, had a nervous breakdown on the set of What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), she “didn’t turn up in another movie until Mike Nichols’s Catch-22 (1970), by which time Hollywood had changed to the point...

Mar 5, 2018 — Along with 132 short films and a slew of masterclasses, installations, discussions, and other events, the Berlin International Film Festival presented 253 features this year. I managed to catch twenty-seven of them, and Adina Pintilie’s Touch Me Not, winner of...