Author Archives: admin

On a rainy night in October, in the small Francesca Beale Theatre at Lincoln Center, Cemetery of Splendour, the latest film from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, guided its audience through an oneiric meditation on time, compassion, and nationalism. Set and … Continue reading →

Thomas Bidegain’s 2015 film Les Cowboys acts as a modern interpretation of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), using an immigrant-populated and culturally shifting France as a backdrop, as opposed to the American West. At the center of Les Cowboys is … Continue reading →

In Alice Tully Hall, I got my first introduction to Robert Frank – photographer and documentarian, most noted for 1958’s The Americans, a photo book documenting subjects all over the US. Utterly unfamiliar with Frank’s work, I came into Laura … Continue reading →

Jacob Bernstein’s elegiac documentary Everything Is Copy (2015) made me want to call my mom. The director lovingly composed a film about his mother, the famous journalist, author, screenwriter, and director Nora Ephron. Copy chronicles Ephron’s life, starting with photographs … Continue reading →

Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943) is, by all appearances, a stuffy period piece—a comedy of manners. Yet, to take the film at surface value misses the ways that Lubitsch gleefully pokes holes in the era’s overblown pomp. The film … Continue reading →

Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan (2015) seems designed to subvert the expected structure of a typical rom-com. At the beginning of the film, the eponymous protagonist (Greta Gerwig) decides to act on her desire to start a family by getting pregnant … Continue reading →

Michel Gondry’s intimate film Microbe & Gasoline (Microbe et Gasoil) tells the seemingly straightforward tale of Daniel (Ange Dargent)—nicknamed Microbe because of his unusually small frame—and Théo (Théophile Baquet)—called Gasoline based on his affinity for mechanics—two friends who bond, as … Continue reading →

My memories of New York hold light – the refraction of gold lamps in rain-slick glass doors, the flickering burn of taillights, the gentle halogen glow of the city as reflected by low-hanging clouds. I found the city easy to … Continue reading →

Writing about Projections Program 2 feels very freeing for me. Unlike other reviews for longer films, which feel as though the narrative of the film always restrains them, where describing plot feels like an obligation, Projections Program 2, a collection … Continue reading →

Of all the fine films I saw at The New York Film Festival, my favorite was Rocco and His Brothers. Recently restored in digital 4K, this black-and-white Italian melodrama focuses on a family who moves from the countryside to Milan … Continue reading →