30 years after his debut feature Kicking and Screaming (1995), writer-director Noah Baumbach, having crafted a notable career both in Hollywood and outside of it, has made his softest film yet, and that’s not meant as a pejorative. George Clooney stars as a fading movie star who embarks on a European trip to attend a film festival that’s planning to gift him a career tribute, using the honor as an excuse to spend time with his unsuspecting, backpacking daughter. Jay Kelly is a movie made by a parent in a time of reflection. That it was co-written by actress Emily […]

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Released 30 years ago, Michael Mann’s Heat is an almost-three-hour-long odyssey through Los Angeles and the minds of two ideologically opposed men who inhabit it. Codes are established and broken, thrills are tempered by sobering terror, paths are chosen and exit routes mapped. If high-level thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) has steeled himself to sever relationships to anyone or anything at a moment’s notice, the man pursuing him, police detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), is defined by a refusal to let go. He holds on to his angst, he tells his wife (Diane Venora), refusing to engage in cathartic […]

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In Netflix’s A House of Dynamite, the United States’ government and military chain of commands scramble to respond as a ballistic missile of unknown origin speeds toward the Midwest. The non-linear narrative replays the final 20 minutes before impact from different perspectives, taking the viewer into the White House Situation Room, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, U.S. Strategic Command and an Alaskan missile defense battalion. It’s certainly not cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s first time lensing a room full of analysts staring worriedly into a bank of monitors. “Someone actually said to me once, ‘Is that the only thing you do? You’re […]

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A tutor and a free spirit fall in love in sixteenth-century Stratford, but then Will (Paul Mescal) leaves Agnes (Jesse Buckley) for London while she raises their three children. Tragedy threatens to split them apart until Agnes sees her husband’s latest play, Hamlet. Based on the best-selling novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet has been earning praise since it screened at Telluride in August. Chloé Zhao’s direction, and performances by leads Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, have drawn particular attention. But Hamnet has a distinctive atmosphere that sets it apart from many of this year’s releases. That look and feel is […]

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After taking a spontaneous dip in the South of France, visiting Swedish perfumer Mia (Elektra Kilbey) is badly stung by a jellyfish. She rushes out of the water—topless, shivering, limping—and Franck (Franck Sémonin), a local out for a stroll, leaps into chivalric action, giving the bare-chested woman the shirt off his back. Tending to her injury, he runs a credit card over her thigh in order to remove the venom lingering on her skin. In France on a residency to further her craft, Mia grabs the card from Franck’s hand and wafts it under her nose—traces of lavender from her […]

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The 15th edition of U.S. in Progress—an industry market cum post-production prize competition held during the Polish-based Tauron American Film Festival—began on a particularly unorthodox foot this year. Though the festival’s based in the Southwestern, thousand-year-old metropolis of Wrocław, the program’s international cohort landed at Warsaw Chopin Airport, nearly 200 miles away from AFF’s home base, in the days preceding the event itself.  Inconveniently, the Wrocław airport underwent extensive renovations from October 26 through December 4 of this year. As the AFF and its U.S. in Progress showcase unfold between November 6-11, the timing couldn’t be more headache-inducing. Yet for […]

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After a run-in with a new coworker at the laundromat, Cass (Asia Kate Dillon) has a drunken hookup with Kalli (Louisa Krause). Kalli seems to take an immediate trusting to Cass, and after Cass tells her their side-gig is nannying, Kalli asks if they can watch her daughter Ari (Ridley Asha Bateman) while she goes out of town for work. Cass makes an income by caring for others—watching rich kids by day, serving in a restaurant by night—but their own inability to take care of themselves comes to the forefront when they suddenly have to play parent to a pre-teen. […]

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Almost no film has devastated me as much as Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab. In an age of numbing doom-scrolling, we may be unprepared for the impact when a single story is given the thoughtful, shattering treatment by an empathetic filmmaker. That story made headlines: a 6-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind, called the Red Crescent emergency center in Ramallah in January 2024 begging for help because a tank was shooting at her family’s car. Recently been nominated at the Oscars for Four Daughters and The Man Who Sold His Skin, Ben Hania sought permission from Hind’s […]

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Diane Kruger is a German actress known for her verticality in roles and languages, from Hollywood blockbusters like Troy and National Treasure, to Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and international gems like In the Fade, for which she won Best Actress at Cannes. Currently she stars in two television series, The Seduction, a French-language period drama for HBO MAX, in which she plays Madame de Rosemonde, and Little Disasters, a psychological thriller for Paramount+ where she plays a complex, fiercely devoted new mother whose world collapses around her. On this episode, she gives us a peek inside her acting process and the ingredients in the “sauce” that help her do her work, […]

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Liz Garbus broke into documentary features with The Farm: Angola, USA, an unnerving portrait of the notorious Louisiana prison. Made when Garbus was 24, it looks eerily prescient today. Garbus has since directed a string of influential works covering the spectrum of the documentary genre. Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer used the Gilgo Beach serial killings to uncover police corruption in Suffolk Country. What Happened, Miss Simone?, a wide-ranging look at Nina Simone, won Emmy and Peabody awards. All In: The Fight for Democracy tackled voter suppression. She’s explored shorts, features and series for every available platform, from […]

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