Tyrannosaurus Death! is a film that grabbed me, shook me, and spat me out with a new perspective on the balance between grace and pain that comprises this life. That’s a pretty good value in just 15 minutes. Read More
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This is where humiliation lives: in the gap between the self we want to be and the self we actually are. Read More
As much as The Miseducation of Cameron Post is about finding salvation within one’s self, it is also about finding hope and protection in the arms of a chosen family. Read More
It's hard to know whether The Mule will be Clint Eastwood’s final film, either in front of or behind the camera—but it sure feels like it. Read More
On the one hand, everything we do may be meaningless. Oblivion may be the only truth. But on the other, maybe it’s exactly this ultimate despair that makes our all our everyday actions essential. Read More
A mid-winter love affair feels decadent but also rather necessary, and Cold War rewards like a hot chocolate spiked with brandy: warming, bracing, to be savored. Read More
This scream is a scream of defiance. Read More
Featured Essays
In Phantom Thread, the concession of loving is not an ending, nor a triumph—it is a turn of the screw. Read More
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is as much about the incalculable weight of this mythology as it is the titular deed. Read More
On Upstream Color: I see you. Do you see me. Read More
Extras
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It can be so frustrating to have parents, particularly at mealtimes. Read More
To be aware of beauty is to be corrupted by it, to develop a covetous lust for it, to equate possessing it with consuming it. Read More
Bruno Bozzetto’s version of evolution in Allegro Non Troppo is a death march—a story of food chasing food. Read More
November 2018
In Bergman's work, boats tend to function as the escape hatch that is never opened, the getaway car that is never put into drive, the dream that, were it to actually set sail, would capsize under the weight of the gilded burden of escapism. Read More
"I’ve done a lot of other things, but when I look back on my work… [my work with Bergman was] probably what gave me most life. Because I was so alive, and I was trusted so much." Read More
As a play, a film, and a television series, Scenes from a Marriage examines a relationship in brutally exacting, loving detail. Read More
From the archives
2013-2018
In this month's issue, we are thrilled to bring together essays that touch on themes of love, loss, self-discovery, intrigue, films, food and finding where you're supposed to be. Read More
What is the task of the journalist, of the homicide detective, of the artist? What are we trying to get to the bottom of, but can’t? Read More
Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War trilogy (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven and Earth) helped shape America’s collective memory of the Vietnam War at a crucial moment. Read More
In Howl’s Moving Castle, food is more than just a necessity—it sustains life, in every sense of the phrase: helping a body hold skin and sinew together, while acting as an expression of love and care. Read More
The meals in Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child and Landline are not extravagant as dining experiences, but they are meaningful as relational ones: small, comforting rituals that provide a moment of constancy amidst chaos. Read More
Bruno Bozzetto’s version of evolution in Allegro Non Troppo is a death march—a story of food chasing food. Read More
Both visually and textually, Cries and Whispers is concerned with exteriors and interiors, with surfaces and what seethes beneath them. Read More
Harriet Andersson’s contributions to Bergman’s oeuvre cannot be understated—her fearlessness about her body within a performance allowed her to create something both fierce and distinctive. Read More
What Persona produces, onscreen and in its critics, is more than the sum of its narrative parts. Read More
The stories we encounter as children never quite leave us; they shape and color everything that comes afterward. Read More
On the twisted war of influence in Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite. Read More
In Bergman's work, boats tend to function as the escape hatch that is never opened, the getaway car that is never put into drive, the dream that, were it to actually set sail, would capsize under the weight of the gilded burden of escapism. Read More
Ingmar Bergman's second film is a tonally-daring Expressionist chiaroscuro of broken lives attempting to escape a rain-soaked nightworld of broken dreams. Read More
As a play, a film, and a television series, Scenes from a Marriage examines a relationship in brutally exacting, loving detail. Read More