May 4, 2020 — “You’ve never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you, Diz?”Jean Arthur asks this poetic, expressively peculiar question of Thomas Mitchell in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and we understand her yearning for truth...

Sep 30, 2010 — American film legend Arthur Penn, the director of The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde, and Little Big Man, and other classic movies, died this week at age eighty-eight. When we heard the sad news, we thought of this short reminiscence...

Paul Arthur is the author of A Line of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965 (University of Minnesota Press). He is a regular contributor to Cineaste and Film Comment and is coeditor of Millennium Film Journal.

Sep 29, 2026 — The body-swap mystery stumped more than a few viewers in Cannes, but it seems to have found its footing in New York.

Nov 20, 2025 — To complement his new exhibition, Jafa programs a series of four double bills.

Aug 23, 2016 — In honor of the filmmaker, who passed away in 2016 at the age of ninety-two, Alan Arkin recalls the man who directed him in two of his favorite films, Popi and The In-Laws.

Aug 18, 2016 — Beloved Hollywood veteran Arthur Hiller passed away yesterday at the age of ninety-two. In a career that spanned five decades and more than thirty films, he demonstrated remarkable versatility, with credits ranging from Neil Simon comedies (The Out-of-Towners, Plaza Suite)...

May 22, 2006 — Barbara Kopple’s detailed analysis of a Kentucky mine workers’ strike is a virtual hub of urgent themes, formal tendencies, political debates, and material practices that define post-sixties documentary in America.

May 9, 2005 — Les Blank’s documentary examines the interaction of premodern tribal existence with European modernity, epitomized by a movie narrative about the invidious clash of brute nature and a singular ego bent on his own mission of cultural enlightenment.