Look at Life

May 24, 2016 — “I always thought of musicians as being the saints of our time,” says documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker in a recent interview for the New York Times on the subject of his 1967 vérité portrait of Bob Dylan Dont Look...

Jul 23, 2025 — The director of Female Perversions looks back on the film’s transgressive exploration of women’s sexuality and on Tilda Swinton’s role as a key collaborator.

Feb 25, 2025 — Misunderstood on release and mishandled by its distributor, this genuine cult classic opened the door to a radical new way of making films.

Sep 18, 2024 — We’re reading or anticipating new books from Pedro Almodóvar, Al Pacino, Werner Herzog, and Cher.

Jan 30, 2024 — A kaleidoscopic work of literary adaptation, Dee Rees’s fourth feature film is anchored in a powerful fraternal bond between two men from opposite sides of the color line.

Sep 9, 2022 — James Wong Howe was a fighter, and he learned how to be one over the course of a turbulent upbringing. Born Wong Tung Jim in 1899, in the Chinese province of Guangdong, the man who would become one of the...

Jun 8, 2022 — The Indian director, actor, and producer’s early death has enshrined him as a tragic icon in public memory. But there is more to his art than misery.

May 5, 2022 — A coincidental set of screenings and openings almost seems to be responding to the impending reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda The poster for the seventy-second Cannes Film Festival, held in May 2019, used a photograph taken during the shooting of Agnès Varda’s first film, La Pointe Courte, in 1954. Wearing rolled-up trousers, a shirt,...

Apr 28, 2020 — I first fell in love with Miranda July’s work with her strange, wild, poignant short stories;  her stories led me to her novel  and first two feature films, which I watch so  often that they have over time become spiritual...