Imagine making this movie, a masterpiece for the ages, and the phone not ringing.

12/23/65: Welles' Chimes at Midnight w/OW, Jeanne Moreau, John Gielgud ++ More: @szacharek.bsky.social: www.villagevoice.com/orson-welles... @glennkenny.bsky.social: www.rogerebert.com/features/the... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

So much effort goes into finding elaborate subtexts for films of anonymous realism that, when a film of great style comes along, its style dominates discussion and its substance, being overlooked, is declared nonexistent.

12/22/62: Welles' The Trial w/Anthony Perkins, OW, Moreau, Romy Schneider OW: My "most autobiographical film" More @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab... @bilgeebiri.bsky.social: moviemezzanine.com/mezzanine-es... @shelaghrowanlegg.bsky.social: screenanarchy.com/2023/09/the-...

Father Mother Sister Brother is Jim Jarmusch's comeback, in both senses—it's a return and a retort; its modest surfaces are roiled by strong ideas and the past: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Was just talking about this weird and wonderful Christmas movie last night, Frank Tashlin's Susan Slept Here, with its eternal Tashlinesque ribaldry matched by his giddy inside-Hollywood reflexivity; it's on @tcmtv.bsky.social at 11:30am (almost now): www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Few movies this year can hold a fast-melting candle to Bi Gan's RESURRECTION. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

For years, I've been going on about Jacques Becker's great yet unavailable version of Arsène Lupin, "The Adventures of...," with its dextrous overtones of Fantômas (scroll down); now, here it is, streaming on @kinolorber.com www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Marty Supreme is a whirlwind of ferocious passion, fanatical energy, and wild-eyed optimism, and the entire cast—stars and newcomers alike—shares in its wondrous expressive fury: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

An alternative source for the title of the book? (from Hollywood, the Dream Factory, Hortense Powdermaker's 1950 anthropolological study of the film business)

This year's version of The Heartbreak Kid is The Mastermind.

12/17/72: Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid w/Grodin, Shepherd ++ W Neil Simon/DP Owen Roizman @hamrahrama.bsky.social: "an underdog comedy where the underdog is a jerk" More @noelvera.bsky.social: criticafterdark.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Two by Ulrike Ottinger tonight at @metrographnyc.bsky.social, Freak Orlando (7:15pm) and Ticket of No Return (9:50pm) a crucial style statement as political liberation): www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...

Written on the Wind and All That Heaven Allows aren't streaming, which suggests the dangers that await, the effacing of history by unavailability; own. At least, for now, there's @tcmtv.bsky.social WotW at 8:15am and ATHA at 10: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich... www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Much in January @criterionchannl.bsky.social to get excited about,such as Cane River, Be Pretty and Shut Up!, A New Leaf, Syberberg's Romy: Anatomy of a Face (I've been going on about it for a while); Death Is a Caress (Edith Carlmar), and Now, Hear Me Good, a new short by Dwayne LeBlanc...

The Dawn Patrol, Howard Hawks's first talking picture, also a flying picture and a singing picture, and the template for his ironic way with violence and death; on @tcmtv.bsky.social 11:30am (ET) titled Flight Commander (but originally reviewed as The Dawn Patrol):  www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

Irritating that the shortlists for Documentary and International Feature omit one of the best films in both categories, Fiume o Morte!, the Croatian entry. At least it will get a release, from @icarusfilms.bsky.social but it deserved the boost; much better than many that were chosen.

On Beethoven's 255th birthday, a cinematic reminder that Godard is the filmmaker of his string quartets—on the soundtrack of A Married Woman (where I first heard them) and onscreen, in some of the best scenes of musical performance in the history of cinema, in First Name: Carmen, streaming on MUBI.

Repertory emergency: in the exhilarating, joyfully yet only superficially frivolous Modesty Blaise, Joseph Losey flaunts immodest style and blazing invention to mighty ends; if only he'd have made earnest dramas with such freedom; at @moma.bsky.social at 6:30pm: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

All too rare, back today at Metrograph at 6:30pm: Chantal Akerman's Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Grey Gardens, the great musical documentary by the Maysles brothers, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer, at @movingimagenyc.bsky.social at 5:30pm—with a Q. & A . w/Meyer and co-editor/producer Susan Froemke! www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Good Q. in the other place about neglect of The Phoenician Scheme & Benicio Del Toro's performance. A.: 4. Phoenician Scheme 9. OBAA Both performances great in different registers; the stylized performances that Wes A. elicits are, wrongly, hardly ever esteemed as highly as showy effort elsewhere.

This sounds good—oral history on location: Chantal A, Bruxelles, by Vincent Dieutre, filmmaker and critic; it's on TV in France, I hope it finds its way here at some point (so many good French films don't): www.lesinrocks.com/cinema/chant...

Missed out on these today at Metrograph, but they're back tomorrow: Dreyer's comedic but bitterly ironic Master of the House (1925) at 12:30pm, Whit Stillman's comedic but bitterly earnest Metropolitan, at 8:20pm (a capacious film about which there's much more to say)...:

Short word from next week's Goings On about Ella McCay (scroll down): in general, as with coffee, a good bad movie is better than a bad good movie, and Ella McCay is the former; despite its forced and flailing tone and just-so construction, it has an idea: www.newyorker.com/culture/goin...

The Lord's slayer: on the greatness of Josh O'Connor and John Dickson Carr, Benoit Blanc and Dr. Fell, and the many delights of Rian Johnson's mass-murder mystery, WAKE UP DEAD MAN. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Footnote to the historical side of the Warner Bros. tussle, re: the fabulous fifties: mentioned Allan Dwan's Silver Lode and The River's Edge: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich... www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

There's history behind the proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. by Netflix (and of WBD by Paramount Skydance), deals that would matter mightily for the art of movies and for much more: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

I think that the Mets are undergoing a soft rebuild, that Stearns is tacitly clearing the ground for building the team on his own model.

"I don't want to have nostalgia, I prefer to be furious rather than nostalgic."—Leos Carax www.lemonde.fr/culture/arti...

BOTD John Cassavetes!!! 🙏🙏🙏 MCCT5: 5)Husbands 4)Woman Under the Influence 3)Shadows 2)Opening Night 1)Killing/Chinese Bookie More: Oliver Lunn: www.bfi.org.uk/features/whe... @benkenigsberg.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/m... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Jerry Lewis's The Bellboy ranks high on the list of great first features; it packs a concentrated dose of his democratic philosophy and his self-deprecating pathos, and it's got a new place of honor, on @criterionchannl.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich... www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Two extraordinary new documentaries, "Suburban Fury" (@alamodrafthouse.bsky.social ) and "Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk" (@kinolorber.com) and one classic, "Woo Who? May Wilson" (OVID.tv and @kanopy.com) expand and reflect on the form of portrait-films: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Double feature at a distance: Óliver Laxe's rare, great You All Are Captains, Metrograph 4:30pm; and an evening with Tom Schiller at the Roxy at 7 (great interview by @nicopsetzer.bsky.social): www.newyorker.com/culture/rich... www.newyorker.com/video/watch/... www.screenslate.com/articles/bus...

12/6/1970: Gimme Shelter - Maysles brothers doc of Rolling Stones at Altamont End of the 60s? [We lean Isle of Wight Aug '70] More Amy Taubin: www.criterion.com/current/post... @fookthis.bsky.social: talkfilmsociety.com/articles/goo... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Now more than ever, etc. Thrilled and proud to unveil, with the great @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social, our lists of the best films of 2025: www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

The best movies of the year: my list, alongside the one by @justincchang.bsky.social with whom I'm delighted to be on the same page, literally and metaphorically: www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

Claire Simon's new documentary Écrire la vie (Writing Life), "about" Annie Ernaux—filmed in French high schools as students read and discuss Ernaux's work (she doesn't appear)—sounds amazing, per @lemonde.fr & @liberation.fr; on TV there now, opening April 29, I hope it's shown here soon:

Jacques Becker is always tactile—his emotional warmth is also physical, as in Touchez Pas au Grisbi, at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social at 1pm; word on it in this longer word on Becker, who—head to the end—was clear-eyed (and sharp-penned) about the nature of his art: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

BOTD Jean Luc Godard! We remain in awe of his astonishing 15 feature run, 1960-7 More: @justincchang.bsky.social: www.latimes.com/entertainmen... @samadams.bsky.social: slate.com/culture/2022... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/post...

On Godard's birthday (it would be his 95th), note that hardly any of his later work is streaming; his career, the very nature of his art, remains deep underground. In Praise of Love, one of his greatest films, is unavailable; look at the murderous reviews from its release here.

And not available to stream.

The only dramatic feature directed by Richard Pryor, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling—boldly constructed, deftly composed, infuriatingly maligned in its time—is on @tcmtv.bsky.social at 3 a.m.: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

Word, on Jean Eustache's birthday (he'd have been eighty-seven), on Numéro Zéro and its fundamental place in his body of work: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

The second act, Steadicam Theodicy, is even greater than the first, but the intermission was too long.

Peter Bogdanovich's exuberant catastrophe comedy What's Up, Doc? embraces romantic chaos and parses it in uproarious detail; in retrospect, a very sad comedy (at @movingimagenyc.bsky.social at 3:30pm in 35mm.) www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

In honor and memory of Tom Stoppard, who, adapting Nabokov's Despair for Fassbinder, made it personal: the dialogue dances over the very vortex that nearly dragged him in and instead cast him out: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

With more classic Busby Berkeley on @tcmtv.bsky.social tonight (42nd St. and Gold Diggers of 1933, plus the aquatic erotics of Million Dollar Mermaid), a couple of words from a while ago, one on Berkeley himself and another on the Depression and Eddie Cantor, who brought him from stage to screen:

Gloria Grahame & Bogie in Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place, 1950 The still photographer on the set was Irving Lippman. #stillonset "Ray - who was married to Grahame at the time - endows the couple’s intimate moments with a bittersweet ardor." - Richard Brody @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social

Heureux de lire la belle et enthousiaste critique de Hedda par @borisbastide.bsky.social dans Le Monde; à ne pas rater, un film formidable en lui-même et une réinterprétation géniale de la pièce d'Ibsen.