Sister Act

Oct 16, 2020 — First Person One of the internet’s more delightful creations is a compilation of Aaron Sorkin quotes assembled by a man named Kevin Porter in 2012. Its purpose is to expose the screenwriter’s propensity for repetition. Some of the examples, plucked...

Oct 13, 2020 — I know I need somethingOr someone. From “Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day” (1978), by Nikki Giovanni While the screen is still dark, Gladys Knight’s voice drifts in, in a strong, sincere belt: “How can I / Work out this...

Oct 1, 2020 — Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 An artist, critic, and scholar highly respected in his native Iran but too little known in the West, Bahram Beyzaie is a gifted autodidact of traditional and modern theater and performing arts, and...

Aug 31, 2020 — Fans around the world remember an accomplished actor, a genuine movie star, and a generous role model.

Jul 14, 2020 — Bruce Lee seemed born to be on-screen. At three months old, he appeared as an infant in a Hong Kong movie called Golden Gate Girl (1941). After he died suddenly of cerebral edema in 1973 at the age of thirty-two,...

Jun 23, 2020 — In Céline Sciamma’s unabashedly romantic and fiercely political film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), two women fall in love and set each other free, if for only a few glorious days or weeks. It is one of the...

Jun 22, 2020 — Songbook At first it’s just one of many Fellini-esque dances: a band switches to an upbeat tune, Nino Rota’s “Caracalla’s (La Bersagliera),” and a previously dour party becomes an impromptu circle of ecstatic movement. Though overshadowed in La dolce vita...

Jun 15, 2020 — The eye contact, the exhilarating anxiety of sharing private tastes, the power of knowing what you want and summoning up the courage to ask for it: in case you can’t tell, I’m talking about the once-upon-a-time experience of renting a...

Mar 31, 2020 — Everybody loves Show Boat, but where is the love for the woman whose name alone sits above the title in James Whale’s dazzling 1936 film version? Edna Ferber was a best-selling novelist for decades, and in her peak years also...

Mar 24, 2020 — How do you talk about Leave Her to Heaven without talking about Gene Tierney’s face? You can’t. Because its planes and curves, its cunning expressions and its tantalizing opacity, are such a central piece of the movie itself. A series...