On the Beat

Nov 22, 2019 — Jean-Jacques Beineix’s vibrant art-house sensation Betty Blue (1986) introduced to the world, in twenty-one-year-old Béatrice Dalle, an extraordinary new acting talent. Fully inhabiting the warmth, sexiness, and increasingly violent self-destructiveness of the title character, whose stormy love affair with an...

Jun 13, 2012 — Tasteful British cinema got a refreshing dose of amorality with Danny Boyle’s stylish and violent tale of greed and paranoia.

Aug 14, 2019 — A week into this year’s edition, a few critical favorites are emerging from the competition.

Jan 25, 2019 — Retrospectives in New York and Glasgow offer opportunities to catch up with or revisit the work of an outstanding director of comedies.

Dec 11, 2024 — Sean Baker’s eighth feature has been picking up awards and nominations and landing on several best-of-2024 lists.

Apr 5, 2024 — Léa Seydoux is the star of the week, and we’re also reading about Marguerite Duras, Juraj Herz, and Kinuyo Tanaka.

Sep 3, 2007 — Aconversation, a misunderstanding. The basic pattern in many of Jim Jarmusch’s films is two characters, sometimes three, bound together by chance and wandering along toward an ill-defined goal, each trying all the while to get to know the other or...

Feb 12, 2020 — If you were born in Mexico City in the second half of  the twentieth century, you grew up feeling that everything could come tumbling down in a matter of minutes. You grew up amid the reverberation of past earthquakes—all their...

Jan 31, 2018 — This year’s Skandies countdown has begun. Mike D’Angelo’s twenty-third annual survey of critics he knows and trusts is always one of most interesting of the many best-of-the-year lists to spend time with. There are nine categories, including best scene, which...

Jul 25, 2017 — The Toronto International Film Festival has announced a first round of films lined up for its 2017 edition, running from September 7 through 17. In all, fourteen Gala and thirty-three Special Presentations—so far. Here’s the rundown; each of the titles...