For most filmmakers, picking up a camera is a form of expression. For Jafar Panahi, it’s an act of political resistance. Having been arrested several times (as recently as July of this year), prohibited from traveling and officially banned from filmmaking since 2010 by the Iranian government, the Tehran-based director …
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You don’t have to be fanatical about Whitney Houston to have a go-to Whitney moment — you just need to love the sound of a human voice soaring into the stratosphere. Early adopters would probably cite her 1983 appearance on The Merv Griffin Show, right after Clive Davis signed her …
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“Everyone likes watching a story about two people trying to fight off their natural attraction to each other,” declares the dashing Chef Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) while strolling after dark with Emily (Lily Collins) in the new season of Emily in Paris. Gabriel and Emily have just left a very uncomfortable …
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What is it about Pinocchio? It’d merely be a funny coincidence if Guillermo del Toro’s dark new take on this classic tale were only the second adaptation in recent memory, after Robert Zemeckis’s Disney version from earlier this year, which starred Tom Hanks as Geppetto. But both were beaten to …
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Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter is, among other things, a spiritual sequel to her exquisite recent films The Souvenir (2019) and The Souvenir Part II (2021). Those movies studied a fledgling filmmaker named Julie Hart, who, bearing some autobiographical resemblance to Hogg herself, wound her way through memories of dating …
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In the new FX drama Kindred, a young Black woman named Dana finds herself time-traveling back and forth between Los Angeles in 2016 to a slave plantation in early 19th century Maryland. On some of these trips, Dana (Mallori Johnson) takes along Kevin (Micah Stock), a white man she has …
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Avatar: The Way of Water is a long time coming. The newest chapter in James Cameron’s spears-versus-guns, aliens-versus-predators epic has been planned all along, and its own sequel, Avatar 3, is already set for a 2024 release (the movies were filmed simultaneously). Avatar 4, partially shot, has been slated for …
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Nostalgia. Romance. Mental illness. Racism. The magic of the movies. Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light contains all of these elements, each of them gently sidling next to — and occasionally colliding clumsily into — each other. Any one of these subjects would be enough on their own to power a …
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Charlie is 600 lbs. This is the first thing you notice about him; this is the first thing you are meant to notice about him. He’s always been a big guy, he says, but he “let it get out of control.” On the Zooms in which Charlie teaches online English …
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When Chris Smith — a documentarian who had tackled everything from Method acting run amuck to a music festival falling apart — was asked what subjects he might be interested in pursuing in terms of a new project, he didn’t mention a “what.” Instead, he gave his producers a “who”: …
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