The Exam

Mar 31, 2026 — Claude Lelouch’s Palme d’Or–winning breakout hit combines elements of a classic Hollywood love story with dynamic photography, an edgy editing style, and a naturalistic sense of character and location.

Jun 11, 2024 — A radically strange, postmodern adaptation of a novel by Jean Genet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film is grounded by a sweaty, seething, meaty eroticism—a confrontational sexuality that remains bracing.

Nov 21, 2023 — What stuck with me most after watching La cérémonie (1995) for the first time was the chewing gum.It’s not the scene most often cited in discussions of this late-career classic from French thriller master Claude Chabrol. Don’t get me wrong:...

Oct 18, 2022 — Drawing from Latin American folklore, Jayro Bustamente conjures an intimate, supernatural tale that engages with Guatemala’s history of violence.

Dec 13, 2021 — When Jessica Beshir embarked on making her debut feature more than a decade ago, she realized she was going to have to get comfortable with the unfamiliar and unknown. Not only did the Mexico-born, Brooklyn-based filmmaker have to learn how...

Sep 24, 2019 — Bill Forsyth is Scotland’s most famous filmmaker, and Local Hero (1983) is his most famous film—for many, the true subject of Local Hero’s title is the Glasgow-born writer-director himself. The enduring affection and adulation for Local Hero stem from the...

May 14, 2019 — It all comes down to that first wink. About half an hour through Michael Haneke’s 1997 cause célèbre Funny Games, Paul (Arno Frisch), one of the two politely psychotic young home invaders who’ve taken a family captive, leads one of his...

Apr 21, 2017 — Did You See This? With its startling mix of tones and genres, Jonathan Demme’s 1986 Something Wild captures the destabilizing experience of falling in love. Kim Morgan looks back on this “moody, transgressive, genre-bending, weirdly romantic (and unromantic)” comedic thriller...

Apr 14, 2017 — Did You See This? The just-announced 2017 Cannes Film Festival lineup is a wealth of riches, with new work from Arnaud Desplechin, Abbas Kiarostami, Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Noah Baumbach, and Lynne Ramsay, plus a mystery-shrouded Twin Peaks revival. Bright...

Dec 10, 2014 — Social satire, women’s melodrama, queer metaphor, or horror movie? Todd Haynes’s elusive masterpiece is all of these and none of them.