Send Help is a setup for shocks and twists; a little fun but mostly flashy, empty and, above all, incurious, including about the absolute basics: a better title would be No Shit, because they don't (capsule review from next week's Goings On, scroll down: link.newyorker.com/view/5bea068...

Kelly Reichardt: "The landscape, the lighting, or the music shouldn't dictate your emotion. I don't want to film a sunset. My mother always asked me, 'Are you happy?' And I answered that I don't know what she's talking about. I suppose that I have a fear of sentimentality."...

1. 400 Blows 2. Mississippi Mermaid 3. A Gorgeous Girl Like Me 4. Fahrenheit 451 5. The Man Who Loved Women

The realism of Akinola Davies, Jr.'s first feature, My Father's Shadow (opening next Friday) is something else, more like mytho-realism, because its first-person story goes past personal memory into family, community, and history; highly recommended: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

2/5/74: Very #70s: Patty Hearst Kidnapped Note the fine Paul Schrader film, w/Natasha Richardson, Ving Rhames -Kael: "a lean, impressive piece of work" More: @redroomrantings.bsky.social: vaguevisages.com/2016/09/22/o... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

The friendship of Timothée Chalamet and Anamaria Vartolomei gives hope that he'll join her in a film by Bruno Dumont (The Second Empire?). His manner, like Fabrice Luchini's, is made for Dumont—an unavoidably flippancy.

I knew from the start that there's something wrong with the way that extras are deployed in Schindler's List (one of the many things wrong with the film), wrote about it a while ago, and found further confirmation in the new interview with Elina Löwensohn by @jhoffman.bsky.social

The only problem with movies as good as Filipiñana and zi is that, with their comprehensive artistry, they make most other films a letdown. Can't live only on the peaks, more modest virtues should also be discussed and celebrated, but it's important to acknowledge the difference.

2/2/70: Frederick Wiseman's Hospital (Great double feature: open w/Kieslowski's short doc Hospital/Szpital - @filmotomy.bsky.social: filmotomy.com/krzysztof-ki... More: @nicolasrapold.bsky.social: www.ft.com/content/e0d9... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Much fun "at" Sundance (at home, online) thanks to two great films that premièred there, Rafael Manuel's Filipiñana and Kogonada's zi; delighted to have seen them, even more so to keep them in mind afterward: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

A couple of terrific interviews in February @cahiersducinema.bsky.social —with Ronald Bronstein, by Charlotte Garson ("I'm convinced that, when you zoom in enough on a single person, you break through the ceiling of specificity and emerge on the ground of universality") and Kelly Reichardt,...

Speaking of Joan Crawford, Autumn Leaves is playing at 4 at @moma.bsky.social To Save and Project; a great melodrama with Robert Aldrich's bitter film-noir pessimism, here aimed at hearts-and-flowers romance and the stigmatizing of mental illness—plus the family life that's often at its root:

Extraordinary interview with Kleber Mendonça Filho, by my colleague Stephania Taladrid, that goes far into the sources, ideas, and methods of The Secret Agent; his approach to the archival is a fundamental and far-reaching ethic of cinema: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

The lovely Sundance elegy by @justincchang.bsky.social unfortunately reminded me of Sundance history: ignoring (much of) the future as it was happening: no Frownland, Yeast, Josephine Decker's first films, the Safdies, Tiny Furniture, early Bujalski and Swanberg, Sun Don't Shine, Hamilton...

On the end of Sundance as we know it. (Yes, I wrote about Grub Steak.) www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Max Ophuls's first absolute masterwork, La Tendre Ennemie (The Tender Enemy), from 1936—with form and invention as advanced as its bittersweet comedy is refined—is playing at @metrographnyc.bsky.social at noon, in 35mm.; word about it, and about Ophuls-ism overall: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Delighted to be introducing a longtime favorite of the nerve-jangled sixties, Pretty Poison, at the @paristheaternyc.bsky.social tomorrow at 4, as part of the @nyfcc.bsky.social series, regardless of the big chill.

The Origin of the World, by Brady Courbet

Suzannah Herbert's documentary Natchez, opening today at Film Forum (needs to be shown nationally), turns observation into engagement—with history, its witnesses, its falsifiers, and government's crucial (and endangered) role in its preservation and transmission: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Distractedly forgot to mention that Dennis Hopper's thrillingly and terrifyingly wild Out of the Blue, starring the great, lamented Linda Manz, is playing tonight at Quad Cinema at 8:15pm with a virtual introduction by Brian Cox:  www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

1/28/44: Robert Siodmak ATG #FilmNoir Phantom Lady [P: Joan Harrison] w/Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Elisha Cook Jr. More: @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/video/watch/... @geoff-andrew.bsky.social: www.bfi.org.uk/features/how... @phuonghhle.com: metrograph.com/this-is-a-ma...

On what's left of Mozart's birthday, some specifics (beyond the antiauthoritarian furies of The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni) regarding his indignant rage at injustices of his day: here, his letter of Aug. 8, 1781 regarding one of them (or many of them in one story):

Terrific series coming to @movingimagenyc.bsky.social "2001: The Year, Not the Movie," Feb. 14-April 11; first thought, seeing the title: will they show In Praise of Love? Yes—in 35mm.! plus other favorites, including The Day I Became a Woman, That Old Dream That Moves, and I'm Going Home:

A couple of words from a while back on The Killing of a Chinese Bookie: from 2008, about its crucial transitional place in John Cassavetes's work, and from 2012, in which Ben Gazzara provides the receipts; it screens today at @ifccenter.bsky.social (twice the long version, twice the short):

Thrilled that Once Upon a Time in Harlem has been completed, is playing at Sundance, and is being received as the historic masterwork that it is.

1/25/51: Bogie in The Enforcer, w/Zero Mostel, Ted de Corsia, & Everett Sloane [DP Robert Burks] @kinolorber.com blu w/ @thetallcinephile.bsky.social commentary More: @trailersfromhell.bsky.social: trailersfromhell.com/film-noir-th... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

1/24/61: Antonioni's La Notte w/Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti More: @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.criterion.com/current/post... @mitchellbeaupre.bsky.social: www.pastemagazine.com/movies/miche... @splicedpersonality.bsky.social: crookedmarquee.com/classic-corn...

Bloggy days: Shutter Island (@ifccenter.bsky.social 11:40pm) came out when I was posting daily and sometimes more, and I wrote about it many times (indeed, many more than here), including with quick discussions of remarkable interviews with (and about) Martin Scorsese that were appearing...:

I'd include Lumière, Eva, and Nathalie Granger.

From next week's Current Cinema column, two extraordinary new documentaries, Natchez and Mr. Nobody Against Putin, that confront—with a thoughtful sense of cinematic form—official misrepresentations of history and the ongoing evils that they enable:  www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

To be done with the sex-scene nonsense: 1. The worst sex scenes are the ones that are there on the belief that they're necessary to the plot; I call them forensic sex scenes, whose sole purpose is to inform viewers that the characters had sex with each other (or one another)...

Oscar nominations plus: my friends and colleagues @justincchang.bsky.social and @michaelschulman.bsky.social and I discuss them here, in the @newyorker.com Daily newsletter, with our editor Erin Neil keeping the peace: link.newyorker.com/view/5bea068...

The Oscar nominations—what they got right, what they got wrong, and my own counter-Oscars: what I'd have nominated, what I'd pick to win: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Today in To Save and Project: Murnau's silent Tartuffe (Herr Tartüff, the longer, German version), transformed into The Play's the Thing for modern times, at @moma.bsky.social at 2 (scroll down for short word: www.newyorker.com/culture/goin...

Delighted to see Suhaib Gasmelbari’s cinema-centric documentary Talking About Trees coming to @criterionchannl.bsky.social in February; (happened to mention it here the other day), plus... the answer is, The fundamental film of modern melodrama. What is All That Heaven Allows?

Honored to be introducing Pretty Poison at @paristheaternyc.bsky.social Jan. 31; a longtime favorite which I went to see, way back, because it was shot in Great Barrington, Mass., where I went to summer camp, and was shocked to find it's wild and great. www.paristheaternyc.com/film/nyfcc-p...

Remarkable-documentary alert: Freedom on My Mind, by Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, a teeming, probing, and far-reaching oral history of the 1961-64 Mississippi voting-rights campaign and related electoral politics of 1964 and beyond; @tcmtv.bsky.social 12:30pm: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

1/19/49: Robert Siodmak gem Criss Cross w/Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea [Look for Alan Napier] @eddiemuller.bsky.social: 2nd greatest #filmnoir More: @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/video/watch/... Kannas/ @sensesofcinema.bsky.social: www.sensesofcinema.com/2023/cteq/st...

One of the great last films, An Autumn Afternoon—a ferocious repudiation of conformism and decorum, in private and civic realms—should dispel any misguided notion of Ozu as a gentle observer of delicate feelings; at @moma.bsky.social at 7:  www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Typo of the day, from our friends at @screenslate.bsky.social: part of a trilogy that also includes Kill Bill and....

Monte Hellman's magnificent, still shocking Cockfighter (1974), restored and in 35mm. at @moma.bsky.social To Save and Project series, 6:30pm; a capsule review from a while back plus excerpts from a terrific 2011 interview with him: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab... www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

28 YEARS LATER: BONEHENGE, reviewed. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

What great directors do, as Raoul Walsh did with Going Hollywood (on @tcmtv.bsky.social at noon), is to take seemingly ordinary subjects and bring out what's extraordinary in them—with images, with performances, with tone and mood: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

It's Stroheim time: a look at his entire and dreadfully short directorial career in the light of the new restoration of Queen Kelly from @milestonefilms.bsky.social that's playing at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Greatly enjoyed my colleague @xwaldie.bsky.social's anti-anti-fawning piece; turns out fawning has a great artistic tradition, on stage and screen (as here: two pieces, and a better translation of the full, hair-raising Nietzsche passage: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

La Clef, in Paris, reopened, self-managed and volunteer-run, with Talking About Trees; Friday, will show Sophie Fillières' This Life of Mine (Ma vie ma gueule)+ Q.&A. w/Agathe & Adam Bonitzer (her children, who oversaw its completion); I'm seething that it's still unreleased here:...

Kristen Stewart displays far more originality, daring, and imagination in her directorial début, The Chronology of Water, than do some acclaimed veterans among the year's frontrunners (link now working:  www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

My Name Is Julia Ross, Joseph H. Lewis's 1945 film noir of wartime crimes and terrors, on @tcmtv.bsky.social at 5pm (scroll down: www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

On the anniversary of Éric Rohmer's passing, in 2010, it's worth recalling his greatness and his distinctiveness; a Rohmer film is a genre, but—despite his many emulators—it's a genre with only one practitioner, because of the extraordinary life that formed it: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

I've done a little list of good bad-weather movies to stream—classic and modern, long and short—for this week's @newyorker.com Movie Club newsletter; there's no business like snow business: link.newyorker.com/view/5bea068...