Fictional characters: Hong Sangsoo’s latest, The Novelist’s Film, is a work of deceptive minimalism, inflected with themes of aging, mortality, and the high stakes of art-making
Boo-ster shots: Kelli Weston and Steven Mears join to discuss a pair of just-out-of-season movies—slasher flick Alice, Sweet Alice and classic ghost story The Innocents
Old school: the great action director talks about his latest, and the way in which the “elegant simplicity” of the western provides “primal fodder for a filmmaker”
The good old days: in Armageddon Time, James Gray offers a new, messily autobiographical spin on his career-long preoccupation with the complexities of family and the quest for autonomy
Group chat: Phoebe Chen, Molly Haskell, and Kelli Weston join to discuss highlights and lowlights from the festival that was, including TÁR, Saint Omer, Master Gardener and more
Through the looking glass: Jafar Panahi’s No Bears offers a timely story about the real and imagined borders—national, social, religious—that constrict the freedoms of Iranians
