The Big Shot

Jul 26, 2011 — To a secular eye, Jean-Pierre Melville’s sixth feature film, Léon Morin, Priest (1961), is about almost anything except religion: the deleterious effects of sexual repression, the moral bleariness of wartime and life under occupation, the harsh inflections of history in...

Sep 23, 2010 — I work closely on the Eclipse series, and one of the great privileges of that task is the chance to delve into the films and careers of artists I was previously only passingly acquainted with. Allan King is a supreme...

Nov 9, 2009 — The following essay, written in October 1987, after the release of Wings of Desire, originally appeared in The Logic of Images, a collection of Wim Wenders’s writing that was published in 1992. In the last few years, since Paris, Texas, Berlin...

Jan 15, 2009 — I have never seen New York look so beautifully grand as it did during my trip to Paris this New Year’s. Maybe I should explain. It was my great fortune to be visiting the City of Light while the intensely...

Sep 13, 2024 — Will we ever see Ezra Edelman’s Prince documentary? Plus Chantal Akerman, Demi Moore, and the waning of “elevated horror.”

May 29, 2020 — This week we’re learning about one of the world’s first tracking shots and catching up with Guy Maddin, Lewis Klahr, Sarah Cooper, and Steve Buscemi.

Sep 13, 2018 — Michael Moore takes on Trump, Werner Herzog meets Gorbachev, and Astra Taylor asks a big question.

Jan 15, 2017 — To make the performance of a tedious, exacting, time-consuming task riveting to watch, it is only necessary for the activity to be illegal.

Dec 18, 2025 — Checking in on lists of the best films, performances, scenes, scores, restorations, and more.

May 27, 2025 — Suffused with slapstick humor and slightly surreal wit, Richard Lester’s beloved take on a frequently adapted adventure epic embodies a style of extravagant filmmaking that didn’t survive long past the 1970s.