It would be natural to assume it’s impossible to recreate Harold Pinter’s effects on-screen. What cinematic setting could ever replicate the feeling of an ordinary space that simultaneously exists in a howling metaphysical void? Read More
Now Playing
Veronica Mars and Philip Marlowe share this: the palpable sense that their cynicism exactly stems from their compassion, that their hardness is the scar tissue of a heart they can’t stop the world from breaking over and over. Read More
David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner is a neo-noir comedy of manners masquerading as a thriller, a confidence game as light and effortless as a masterful card trick. Read More
I avoided both Heat and Jackie Brown until 2019. I recognize that this is irrational self-sabotage. It is, in this case, especially irrational behavior given that my number-one all-time celebrity crush is mid-‘90s Robert De Niro. Read More
New Releases, Interviews, Festivals and More
Featured Essays
The first act of Atonement (2007) takes place in the summer of 1935 in Shropshire, England, and this is the kind of heat that’ll drive you insane. Read More
A new crop of female auteurs is challenging The Male Gaze. Read More
In Phantom Thread, the concession of loving is not an ending, nor a triumph—it is a turn of the screw. Read More
I am five years old. Crisp white paper crinkles underneath me as I shift on the table. It is very cold and bright in the room, but I am sweaty.... Read More
We'll never use your email for any purpose other than emailing about Bright Wall/Dark Room, and guarantee that it won't be shared with third parties.
The truth is, no one knows what the truth is. Read More
Martin Scorsese's Conjuring the Rolling Thunder Revue is the life story of the Bob Dylan who mysteriously reemerged onto the Greenwich Village scene of 1975. Or, at least, it’s a story of that Bob Dylan. Read More
Death in Venice remains a tantalizing, sobering piece of work, with hazy morals that have disturbed and fascinated through its 107 years. Read More
The Weight of Family and the Sacrifice for a Better Life in Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition. Read More
In 1972, with his film career dried up and few options available, Tab Hunter took a role in the Roger Corman-produced, Curtis Hanson-directed Sweet Kill—a shameless exploitation-flick ripoff of Psycho—and fashioned himself into a monstrous queer. Read More
Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar is so rigorously, comprehensively excessive, its excesses eclipse any baseline against which excess is typically judged. Read More
From the archives
2013-2019
On slapstick, body horror, and Weekend at Bernie’s II. Read More
An honest sexual act can be profoundly healing. Read More
Despite the widow’s omnipresence in society, she remains an object of dangerous fixation. Read More
On Elaine May’s discarded women in A New Leaf and The Waverly Gallery. Read More
What does it mean to look at women through the eyes of a male protagonist in the three films Elaine May directed in the '70s? Read More
The Heartbreak Kid as Elaine May’s Master Class. Read More
For all of A New Leaf's atonal humor and surrealism, Elaine May still manages to depict marriage in a bleakly true light: as a continual, if cordial, blind date. Read More
From the moment that Ishtar—a big budget comedy combining the talents of Elaine May, Warren Beatty, and Dustin Hoffman—was announced, its legend has loomed large. Read More
"Genius is a word that’s thrown around a lot, but I think whatever it means, if Elaine May is not a brilliant improviser, nobody is. If Elaine May is not a brilliant actress, nobody is. If she’s not a brilliant writer, nobody is. If she’s not a brilliant director, nobody is. So whatever that word means, you can apply it to her in four different categories at least, and probably more." Read More
Only Lovers Left Alive is about marriage, and about weathering long dark nights of the soul just long enough to see the light again, taking each wave as it comes and then bracing for the next one. Read More
The Warriors is about living with—through, during—the night, a lesson we all learn as kids, and carry with us as we sleep. It’s not so much about the fear of what’s behind, but about running as fast as possible toward what’s on the other side. Read More
What if, Clue seems to ask, futility isn’t an Achilles’ heel—what if it’s the point? Read More
On the journey to hell and back in The Crow. Read More
Nothing is ever quite settled in Martin Scorsese's After Hours, it's a cinematic maze that frequently dips its toes into the absurd and macabre. Read More
In many ways, Russian Doll feels like an extended exercise in cognitive therapy. Read More
Our humble festival correspondent on Uncut Gems, Honey Boy, The Laundromat, Waves, The Report, No. 7 Cherry Lane, and the second half of TIFF 2019. Read More
Mikey and Nicky is not the story of two men attempting to escape the mob, nor two men reckoning with themselves—it's the story of two boys wholly unequipped to mediate the complex emotions and responsibilities of male adulthood. Read More
What does it mean to look at women through the eyes of a male protagonist in the three films Elaine May directed in the '70s? Read More
I told the almost comically friendly customs agent that I’m in Canada for business and not pleasure, so in the interest of not getting apprehended by the mounties, my top priority remains the almighty cinema. Read More
The Heartbreak Kid as Elaine May’s Master Class. Read More
For all of A New Leaf's atonal humor and surrealism, Elaine May still manages to depict marriage in a bleakly true light: as a continual, if cordial, blind date. Read More
I love difficult women. I like ladies who talk back with abandon, the ones who don’t give in without a fight, the headstrong, selfish broads with hearts of gold. Read More
Miracle Mile is about many things — romance and Los Angeles and the looming threat of nuclear devastation at the close of the Cold War — but also, obsessively, it’s about marking the passage of time. Read More
Watching The World’s End today, separated from my first viewing by six years that feel more like a lifetime, I don’t see a thrilling and heart-wrenching story. Instead, I see one that’s profoundly sad. Read More
The Warriors is about living with—through, during—the night, a lesson we all learn as kids, and carry with us as we sleep. It’s not so much about the fear of what’s behind, but about running as fast as possible toward what’s on the other side. Read More
Nothing is ever quite settled in Martin Scorsese's After Hours, it's a cinematic maze that frequently dips its toes into the absurd and macabre. Read More
On the journey to hell and back in The Crow. Read More