With Bullet Train behind us, we can now officially say goodbye to the summer movie season. Believe it or not, that boring action spectacle starring Brad Pitt is the last big studio release of the summer. If, as I wrote in June, the first half of the year was surprisingly…

In high school, whenever I was hungry for action, I borrowed my dad’s car and drove across town. I did this at night, usually during the week, when the homework was done and I wasn’t quite ready to relax. I was a restless teenager. While everyone else in my family…

Starting on July 29, Film at Lincoln Center will present New York, 1962–1964: Underground and Experimental Cinema, a week-long series on the avant-garde. The series comes a year after Todd Haynes’ documentary The Velvet Underground (2021) premiered at Cannes, highlighting several artists that FLC will showcase, such as Andy Warhol…

‘Both Sides of the Blade’ is a significant return to form for Claire Denis, the legendary auteur who makes films about desire — Claire Denis’ latest film Both Sides of the Blade begins in bliss, as Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) kiss passionately in the blue sea. Denis captures their tangled bodies in a wordless opening montage set to a swooning score by her frequent collaborator Tindersticks. We see them laugh…

“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.” ~ Nella Larsen, ‘Passing’ I first encountered Nella Larsen’s Passing…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A recent college graduate wanders around aimlessly, moving from part-time job to romantic partner, waiting for the aha-moment when all of life’s big answers are revealed. I know, I know, it’s a tale as old as storytelling itself, or at least American…

The titillating nun-on-nun action in ‘Benedetta’ takes us back to a time when sex scenes were a selling point in films — The most batshit film of the past few years is Benedetta (2021), Paul Verhoeven’s deliciously depraved biopic about a 17th-century nun who claims to have mystical visions of Jesus and develops a cult following until the Church discovers her affair with another nun and arrests her for sapphism. …

I can still feel the dread. While watching the first few seconds of Azor (2021), I was treading lightly on unfamiliar ground. By the end, it dawned on me that I was trapped in a sinister nightmare with no way out. The power of Azor, directed by Andreas Fontana, is…