Back to Back, Face to Face

Aug 17, 2021 — Songbook It will always figure for me as an interval of eerily suspended time: not only a formative moviegoing experience but a jolt of awareness when the line between screen and life dissolved. In a dimly lit Tokyo cabaret the...

Jul 6, 2021 — The fourth of Andrei Tarkovsky’s seven features is his most oneiric and resistant to interpretation, drawing from the director’s own childhood memories to create a fluid sense of history.

Jun 22, 2021 — The multi-hyphenate artist’s staggering and frequently autobiographical body of work reimagines the depiction of Black people in American culture, encouraging us to question everything we see.

Mar 30, 2021 — Mike Leigh’s midcareer masterpiece is one of the finest examples of his ability to construct riveting drama from ordinary life.

Mar 12, 2021 — Deep Dives I can think of few movies that express the pain of being young better than Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kobo Abe’s Ako (1964). I first happened upon it by chance, lurking among the supplements on the Criterion edition of...

Feb 3, 2021 — The lauded star of film, television, and theater was “determined to do all I could to alter the narrative about Black people.”

Oct 28, 2020 — Artistic director Thierry Frémaux hosts a special three-day event in the Grand Théâtre Lumière and cautiously looks ahead to next year’s edition.

Aug 24, 2020 — “Temporal pincers” aside, this two-and-a-half-hour puzzler may be easier to follow than you might expect.

Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda In September 2018, I screened Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places for the Michigan State University Film Collective. We had a lively discussion that went past the scheduled ending time. As I was getting...

Jul 5, 2020 — Among today’s most revered jazz musicians, pianist and composer Jason Moran stands out for how seamlessly he blends tradition and innovation. Throughout his now two-decade career, he has honored the complex history of one of America’s most storied art forms...