The Front Row
Richard Brody offers notes on blockbuster movies, independent films, and documentaries.
What Pauline Kael Failed to See About Young Film Lovers
The first piece Kael wrote for The New Yorker, “Movies on Television,” suggests why she remains a vexing influence in cinema more than a half century later.
“Fiume o Morte!” Brilliantly Dramatizes the Rise of a Demagogue
Igor Bezinović’s film thrusts century-old archival footage into the present, restaging the brazen reign of an autocrat whose tactics feel startlingly resonant today.
The Cinematic Glories of Manoel de Oliveira’s Endless Youth
The Portuguese director, who made twenty-two features after the age of eighty, rejuvenated the art of movies by linking personal experience to the arc of history.
The Hitchcockian Wonders of “Misericordia”
Alain Guiraudie’s intimate thriller, about sex and death in a rustic village, bends classic tropes into modern forms.
“Being Maria” Brings Maria Schneider’s Traumatic Career to Light
Jessica Palud’s portrait of the actress, who starred, with Marlon Brando, in “Last Tango in Paris,” centers the abuse that Schneider endured on that shoot, and its lifelong aftereffects.
“An Unfinished Film” Puts the Pandemic in the Spotlight
This historical docufiction, directed by Lou Ye, boldly dramatizes the outbreak of COVID in China by way of its impact on a movie shoot.
“The Empire” Goes Beyond Good and Evil—to Rural France
Bruno Dumont’s action-fantasy satire is all the greater for its loving, quasi-documentary attention to ordinary life.
“This Life of Mine”: A Terminal Masterwork
The last film by Sophie Fillières, who died before completing it, is a bold reckoning with an artist’s self-awareness and personal freedom in the face of illness.
An Oscars Night Divided Against Itself
Even as the Academy increasingly recognizes independent productions, a blockbuster mentality still governs the almost unwatchable ceremony.
Nicholas Ray’s Hollywood Counterculture
The freethinking director, admired by French critics but at odds with U.S. studios, based one of his greatest films, “Bigger Than Life,” on an article in The New Yorker.