A Better Life

Oct 22, 2021 — An outstanding course on Kieślowski, the revival of a Sundance award-winner, and a couple of ranked lists are among this week’s highlights.

May 17, 2021 — Koresky and his mother revisit ten films from the 1980s, a decade abundant with vital performances from female stars.

Mar 31, 2021 — It has seemed to me for a long time that there is far too little screaming about Albert Brooks. It has seemed that way to all of his staunchest fans, who secretly relish being among the evolved few who know...

Feb 26, 2021 — There would be no Indonesian cinema without Usmar Ismail (1921–71). His third feature, The Long March (Darah dan doa, 1950), was not only the first film to be produced by a fully Indonesian crew and production company but also one...

Jan 19, 2021 — In the summer of 1976, my parents took me to see the tall ships in New York Harbor. I was ten, and I remember very little about it other than that I went and that the ships, tall, did not...

Sep 29, 2020 — In this masterpiece from the father of modern Indonesian cinema, Usmar Ismail, a violent military culture grips the nation in the years following a brutal revolution.

May 27, 2020 — “A filmmaker shows what his career will be in his first 150 feet of film,” François Truffaut once wrote. He was talking about Jean Vigo at the time, but he might as well have been talking about Martin Scorsese, whose...

May 27, 2020 — Walking, like breathing, is something we do without thinking, an activity so commonplace that pedestrian has as its second meaning uninspired, ordinary, dull. Movies, however, reveal this action as more than just the original mode of getting from here to...

Aug 30, 2019 — This week, a feminist journal folds, a filmmaker pens a manifesto, and Richard Linklater commits to a twenty-year project.

Feb 25, 2019 — Turns out, not everyone loves a winner.