In Our Time

Jun 9, 2014 — Your vigilance as an artist is an amorous vigilance, a vigilance of desire.—Roland Barthes to Michelangelo Antonioni, 1979 It’s lamentable that Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the most fashionable vanguard European filmmakers during the sixties, has mainly been out of fashion...

May 27, 2014 — Howard Hawks was both a skillful Hollywood craftsman and a deeply personal artist, and this western of uncommon wit and grandeur is among his greatest and quirkiest films.

Apr 14, 2014 — Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.

Mar 2, 2014 — The author shares his memories of the French filmmaker, who died on Saturday.

Jan 30, 2014 — Growing up with the epically zany, star-studded comedy.

Dec 10, 2013 — In 1998, I interviewed Little Edie Beale, the surviving star of 1976’s Grey Gardens, one of the Maysles brothers’ numerous masterworks (Gimme Shelter, Meet Marlon Brando, and With Love from Truman are equal in technical and emotional innovation). Miss Beale,...

Dec 9, 2013 — The critic and WCP executive director offers a personal take on art cinema and a primer on the project’s scope and mission.

Dec 6, 2013 — Ennio Morricone is known the world over for his instantly identifiable scores in such films as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; Once upon a Time in the West; and The Mission. He has composed hundreds of others, however,...

Oct 23, 2013 — If there’s one quality that separates John Cassavetes’s movies from almost everybody else’s, it’s the density of detail in the storytelling. His films need to be read closely, from beginning to end. There are no lulls with Cassavetes, no lapses...

Oct 21, 2013 — As a film star, John Cassavetes embodied the kinetic, wild-eyed, insanely grinning villain. He seemed born to the role, with his volatile energy and dynamic outbursts, luminous yet curiously deadened eyes, wide-gaping mouth (David Thomson has likened it to a...