A Good American

Jan 18, 2011 — In his Life Studies poem “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage,” Robert Lowell wrote of “free-lancing out along the razor’s edge,” a lean, glamorous, tense phrasing that invokes the Samuel Fuller of the early sixties—a director suddenly without...

Jan 25, 2010 — Unlike the more aesthetically and intellectually conceived French New Wave, Italian neorealism was above all an ethical initiative—a way of saying that people were important, occasioned by a war that made many of them voiceless, faceless, and nameless victims. But...

Jan 17, 2007 — This week, Border Radio was released on DVD. The film is the post-UCLA film school project of first-time directors Allison Anders, Kurt Voss, and Dean Lent. Yesterday, we got a note from a fan who wrote a really thoughtful, personal...

Jun 3, 1991 — Jean Marais on the set of Beauty and the Beast An excerpt from Cocteau: A Biography (1970) by Francis Steegmuller Beauty and the Beast, the first film of Cocteau’s own since The Blood of a Poet, and his finest poem since...

Feb 14, 2018 — With her acclaimed new film Western opening in theaters this week, we spoke with German director Valeska Grisebach on the romantic ideals of the quintessential American genre.

Apr 29, 2025 — In this exuberant and moving portrait of a Brooklyn sex worker, Sean Baker draws on themes he has explored throughout his career, depicting the workaday grind of twenty-first-century American existence with biting humor and clear-eyed humanity.

Jun 26, 2024 — A happily married lawyer strikes up an affair with her teenage stepson in Breillat’s first feature since Abuse of Weakness (2013).

Sep 27, 2023 — After winning a handful of top awards in Beijing, the novelist-turned-filmmaker’s thirteenth fictional feature arrives in New York.

Sep 28, 2022 — A high point of early Argentine cinema, Mario Soffici’s 1939 film about the plight of plantation workers is an unflinching examination of exploitation and violence.

Aug 16, 2022 — The Safdie brothers drew inspiration from their childhood memories for their first feature as codirectors, a terrifying yet wondrous portrait of an unpredictable father.