Chihayafuru: Part I

Feb 1, 2022 — Douglas Sirk’s 1956 masterpiece is a visceral tragedy that lays bare the spiritual malaise of the ruling class.

Apr 6, 2021 — The new issue spotlights some of the most notable films from this year’s Berlinale—and more.

Aug 24, 2020 — In memory of D. A. Pennebaker (1925–2019) 1. The great documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker was motivated to shoot by curiosity. He loved music and friendship, and he had an understanding that everything he filmed recorded histories both personal and...

Aug 13, 2020 — First Person In 1960 The Apartment was playing at Cinema Rialto and was advertised with a loud red poster. I was too young to see it at the time, but I do recall overhearing my parents describing it to their...

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...

Apr 28, 2020 — I first fell in love with Miranda July’s work with her strange, wild, poignant short stories;  her stories led me to her novel  and first two feature films, which I watch so  often that they have over time become spiritual...

Mar 16, 2020 — This month we’re reading about Helen Scott, a liaison between Paris and Hollywood; Anna Karina’s novels; William Faulkner’s screenplays; and more.

Feb 21, 2020 — Reflections from Bong Joon-ho’s interpreter and a report from the set of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria open this week’s wide-ranging round.

Sep 2, 2019 — Dark Passages Thieves’ Highway A hay cart trundles through a sunny field above Fresno, California, in the opening shot of Thieves’ Highway. This is not an image you expect to see in film noir, which most often breeds in cities, alienated from the...

Jun 7, 2019 — He is the most disarming and self-effacing of the English actors who dominated stage and screen in the middle of the twentieth century—the others were John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, and Laurence Olivier. Those fellows carried themselves like grand...