The Hard Way

Mar 30, 2021 — Mike Leigh’s midcareer masterpiece is one of the finest examples of his ability to construct riveting drama from ordinary life.

Nov 25, 2020 — A talk with Claudia Weill, a new issue of Cineaste, and an appreciation of playback singer Asha Bhosle are among this week’s highlights.

Aug 18, 2020 — Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker’s restless, captivating Direct Cinema triumph Town Bloody Hall is a work of oceanography, documenting one splashy moment in the cresting and crashing of American feminism’s second wave. The film chronicles the “Dialogue on Women’s...

Jun 23, 2020 — Late in Tokyo Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa’s thrillingly anomalous record of the 1964 Olympic Summer Games, the film documents one of the most taxing contests, the individual modern pentathlon, in a startling montage of still photographs, accompanied by stark sound effects....

May 8, 2019 — Songbook “The very first time I saw a picture of [Charles Starkweather], I knew I was looking at the future. His eyes were a double zero. There was just nothing there. He was like an outrider of what America might...

Apr 2, 2018 — Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey saw its world premiere on this day, April 2, in 1968 at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. Two days later, it opened in two more theaters, one in Hollywood and one in New...

Mar 12, 2018 — When the SXSW Film Festival presented the world premiere of Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One last night, “technical difficulties KO’ed the sound for the second time in a row, bringing the dizzying, VFX-fueled video game adventure to a grinding halt...

Feb 12, 2018 — Icelandic composer, musician, and producer Jóhann Jóhannsson is gone too early at the age of forty-eight. “Known for compositions that often blended electronics with classical orchestrations, Jóhannsson credits include the Golden Globe-winning score for 2015’s The Theory of Everything,” writes...

Jan 24, 2018 — The forty-seventh edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam opens today and runs through February 4. Over a month ago now, we started tracking the lineup, which the IFFR unveiled bit by bit every few days, culminating with the publication...

Jan 17, 2018 — “My appreciation for his inspiring and innovative cinema grows deeper as the years go by,” writes Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa in an essay that Jonathan Rosenbaum’s posted on his site, “Reflections on Kiarostami’s Two-Way Mirrors.” A new and expanded edition of their...