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March-April 2020

Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s radical genre mashup Bacurau, Nick Pinkerton on the maximalism of Hollywood royal King Vidor, an interview with Saturday Fiction director Lou Ye, and J. Hoberman on Thomas Heise’s epic essay film Heimat Is a Space in Time. Plus: Michael Koresky on the enduring promise of cinema, Pietro Marcello on Martin Eden, Garrett Bradley on Time, Isabelle Huppert in Loulou, Spike Lee’s trusted costume designer Ruth E. Carter, Amy Taubin on Sundance, and much more.

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Issue Details

FEATURES

First Cow
By Clinton Krute
Kelly Reichardt returns to the Pacific Northwest with a delicate yet sharply drawn rumination on friendship and fortune-seeking in the old, weird America.
Plus: an interview with Reichardt by Haden Guest

Bacurau
Interview by Ela Bittencourt
The Brazilian rebel yell from Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles grippingly mingles international movie genres—spaghetti westerns, Cinema Novo, American horror and sci-fi—to drive its all-too-real political parable.

King Vidor
By Nick Pinkerton
Portraying invigoratingly different ideas of America, industry, and individualism, the Hollywood auteur of The Crowd and The Fountainhead made maximalist films while remaining a master of the small moment.

Lou Ye
By Wang Muyan
The stalwart Chinese filmmaker talks about his latest, Saturday Fiction, a pristine black-and-white World War II espionage drama starring the great Gong Li, about flawed human beings caught in the gears of history.

Heimat Is a Space in Time
By J. Hoberman
Through the story of a German family in the 20th century, Thomas Heise illuminates a personal and historical past with the dramatic urgency of letters and the grim ironies of hindsight.

On the So-Called Inevitable
By Michael Koresky
Have no fear: despite the ritual predictions of its imminent demise, cinema still holds its great promise as an art form—as long as we stand firm as its steadfast champions.

DEPARTMENTS & COLUMNS

THE PRE-SHOW | News, views, conversations, and other things to get worked up about
News, Inspired: Pietro Marcello on Martin Eden, Release Me: The Ross Brothers’ Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets by Nicolas Rapold, Directions: Garrett Bradley by Amy Taubin, Restoration Row: Warrington Hudlin’s Street Corner Stories by Max Nelson

CRITICS’ CHOICE
Critics rate and comment on new releases

MAKE IT REAL | The wide, wide world of cinematic nonfiction
Imagining mortality by Eric Hynes

FINEST HOUR | One actor, one performance
Isabelle Huppert in Loulou by Julien Allen

INSIDE STORIES | Redefining the boundaries of the new-media age
The Quay Brothers in Rotterdam by Jonathan Romney

ART AND CRAFT | Filmmaking according to the makers
Costume designer Ruth E. Carter by Christina Newland

SCARE TACTICS | The pleasures of cinematic horror
George Romero’s The Amusement Park by Maitland McDonagh

CURRENTS | New and important work plucked from festivals and elsewhere
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese's This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection and Arun Karthick's Nasir by Devika Girish, Nuria Gimenéz's My Mexican Bretzel and Juan Mónaco Cagni's Offering by Jordan Cronk, Yonah Lewis & Calvin Thomas’ White Lie by José Teodoro, and Iryna Tsilyk's The Earth Is Blue as an Orange by Nicolas Rapold

IN MEMORIAM | Remembering the cinéastes who have passed on
Kirk Douglas by Steven Mears & Fox studios by Michael Sragow

FESTIVALS | Sundance
By Amy Taubin

THE BIG SCREEN | Reviews of notable new films opening in theaters (hopefully near you)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always by Sheila O'Malley, The Truth by Molly Haskell, The Wolf House by Manu Yáñez Murillo, EMMA. by Phoebe Chen

Short Takes: Saint Maud by April Wolfe, Sorry We Missed You by Steven Mears, The Wild Goose Lake by Yonca Talu, The Painted Bird by José Teodoro, Corpus Christi by Justin Stewart

HOME MOVIES | Cinema spun, streamed, and beamed
Bamboozled by Ina Diane Archer, Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto by Grady Hendrix, The Whisperers by Teo Bugbee, The Prince of Tides by Sheila O'Malley, Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 1 by David Filipi, Guns by Clinton Krute, Sweeney! and Sweeney 2 by Bruce Bennett, Maya Deren Collection by Sierra Pettengill, Wish List: The Devil's Cleavage by Nellie Killian

READINGS | Books about all aspects of filmmaking and film culture
Play Time: Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism by Malcolm Turvey, reviewed by J. Hoberman; Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, The Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock by Christina Lane, reviewed by Michael Sragow; Making Images Move: Handmade Cinema and the Other Arts by Gregory Zinman, reviewed by Abby Sun

GRAPHIC DETAIL | The art of the movie poster
The poster art of Ted CoConis by Adrian Curry