The Last First Time

Aug 7, 2020 — This week we’re reading about Setsuko Hara, Satyajit Ray, Buster Keaton, Rita Azevedo Gomes, and Beyoncé.

Jul 24, 2020 — On our minds this week: Bruce Lee’s legacy, Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopia, Hitchcock’s hands, and those Black Lives Matter movie lists.

Mar 7, 2018 — The two big film festivals of April, one for each coast, have made major lineup announcements. The Tribeca Film Festival has rolled out all of its feature titles for its seventeenth edition, running from April 18 through 29. Last month,...

Nov 1, 2017 — “If you go to a single production this season, make it this one.” That’s Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic for the New York Times, enthusiastically recommending Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel, an opera inspired by Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film and...

Feb 24, 2017 — Did You See This? In an excerpt from his new book This Young Monster, Charlie Fox considers the “fearsome lucidity” of Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “There were no signs of a drooling id let loose or canny subterfuge between his public...

May 18, 2026 — Critics are taking to Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, Radu Jude’s The Diary of a Chambermaid, and Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid.

Aug 30, 2024 — Martin Scorsese and Edgar Wright discuss overlooked British films and cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing talks about working with Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Jan 11, 2017 — A revelatory restoration of Lewis Milestone’s underappreciated newsroom comedy accentuates the film’s punchy rhythms and breakneck banter.

Mar 6, 2020 — Above photo: © Chuck Stewart Photography, LLCIn America, black musical genius has never been in short supply, though it hasn’t always been recognized or fairly compensated. Even a casual glance at the résumé of formally trained composer, producer, and arranger...

Apr 6, 2018 — Angela Schanelec’s films “represent the most innovative use of ‘conventional’ editing in narrative cinema since Pialat who, along with Bresson, has been a clear influence,” writes Michael Sicinski for the Notebook. “Schanelec’s contribution is what we might call the ‘epistemological...