From the East

Dec 29, 2017 — We open a round of holiday listening and viewing with Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey’s conversation (99’38”) at the Ringer with Paul Thomas Anderson about Phantom Thread, the few brief clashes he had with Burt Reynolds on the set of...

May 12, 2018 — An urgent dispatch from the conflict in eastern Ukraine is winning plaudits from critics.

May 20, 2017 — “Robin Campillo’s 120 Battements Par Minute [BPM (Beats Per Minute)] is a passionately acted ensemble movie about ACT UP in France in the late 80s, the confrontational direct-action movement which demanded immediate, large-scale research into AIDS,” begins the Guardian’s Peter...

May 18, 2018 — And Sergei Loznitsa wins the best director award for Donbass.

Jan 18, 2023 — Names on the shelves this month include Terrence Malick, Vladimir Nabokov, Veronica Lake, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Mar 12, 2001 — This first-rate action thriller by Michael Bay is a triumph of style, tone, and energy.

Feb 14, 2023 — This month’s roundup opens with an appreciation of Preston Sturges and wraps with a book launch serving donuts and damn fine coffee.

Apr 21, 2022 — In 1948, leftist filmmaker Leo Hurwitz directed a documentary whose title summed up the uncertainty of its moment: for America’s antifascists, the end of the Second World War was a Strange Victory indeed. Using newsreels from the war’s front lines,...

Mar 28, 2019 — Flashbacks No filmmaker of his generation from Eastern Europe could match the charisma and originality of Dušan Makavejev. Forever bustling from festival to festival with his inspiring wife Bojana Marijan—who contributed to the sound and music on many of his...

Oct 24, 2025 — We’re revisiting work by Ken Russell, Chantal Akerman, Billy Wilder, and Abel Ferrara.