The Idea of You

Jan 23, 2017 — In his radical debut feature, Ousmane Sembène reveals the agony of the postcolonial experience through the story of a Senegalese migrant abused by her French employers.

Jun 12, 2012 — Hal Ashby’s delicately off-kilter May-December romance stars two of the unlikeliest countercultural icons of the seventies.

Dec 1, 2009 — The first words we hear are Sam Cutler’s: “Everybody seems to be ready—are we ready?” We were nowhere near ready for what was to come, there at the bitter end of the sixties. I remember that rainy day so well,...

Nov 23, 2008 — The possession of a real voice is always a marvel, an almost religious thing.

Mar 27, 2012 — Good wartime propaganda films are as rare as good wars. Noël Coward and David Lean’s In Which We Serve, which had its premiere in Great Britain in September 1942, when the nation was entering the fourth year of hostilities with...

Mar 24, 2003 — Straw Dogs turns on a woman’s rape, and one can’t blame pictures for depicting. But the film shows the woman, after some tart resistance, seeming to enjoy it, and this approaches the apex of what a delicate soul might call...

Aug 2, 2024 — Along with the new Senses of Cinema, we’re reading interviews with Michael Roemer, Claire Denis, and M. Night Shyamalan.

Aug 27, 2021 — This week we’re delving into the history of Black cinema and reflecting on films from Afghanistan and Iran.

Mar 29, 2019 — Fresh assessments of the work of Chris Marker and Stanley Kubrick, an interview with Kent Jones, and that stellar year for American cinema, 1999.

Sep 14, 2022 — Always innovating, Godard was one of the most vital and influential figures in the history of cinema.