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May-June 2017

Essays on Robert De Niro by Molly Haskell and Nick Pinkerton with an interview by Eric Hynes, meditations on musicals, Leslie Thornton, Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, Errol Morris interviews himself, Montreal independents, Angelo Badalamenti, Sean Byrne, Stéphane Brizé

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Issue Details

SPECIAL SECTION: THE 44th CHAPLIN AWARD GALA HONOREE

Robert De Niro I
By Molly Haskell
The unsettling enigmas and emotional truths of a movie icon

Interview
By Eric Hynes
A chat with the actor/director/producer at his Tribeca office

Robert De Niro II
By Nick Pinkerton
Don’t stare: a career full of hard insights into the forces of attraction

FEATURES

A Woman’s Life
By Kristin M. Jones
French director Stéphane Brizé has quietly amassed an oeuvre of remarkable force and hard-won wisdom, as his latest, a Guy de Maupassant adaptation, confirms

Musicals: The Musical!
By Michael Koresky
The musical seems to be back, but that’s long been the same, sad refrain for this most resuscitated of genres

Leslie Thornton
By Michael Joshua Rowin
The apocalyptic fears and technological schizophrenia of modern life define the deconstructive visions of this avant-garde stalwart

Nocturama
By Howard Hampton
Tonight they’re gonna party like it’s 1969: the radical left consumes itself in Bertrand Bonello’s prismatic tale of terror
Plus: Violet Lucca’s close reading of the film’s controversial climax

Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day
By Aliza Ma
Rainer Werner Fassbinder is on his best behavior in this deeply empathetic long-lost miniseries, newly restored

Canadian Independents
By Adam Nayman
Rough-and-ready 1970s Montreal gave rise to an unforgettable burst of fleet-footed, casually crushing films

DEPARTMENTS & COLUMNS

THE PRE-SHOW | News, views, conversations, and other things to get worked up about
News, Inspired: Laura Poitras, Release Me: Patric Chiha’s Brothers of the Night by Michael Koresky, Directions: Thierry Frémaux by Nicolas Rapold, Restoration Row: Gustav Machatý’s From Saturday to Sunday by Max Nelson, Peevish

CRITICS’ CHOICE
Critics rate and comment on new releases

ART AND CRAFT | Filmmaking according to the makers
Errol Morris on interviewing

MAKE IT REAL | The wide, wide world of cinematic nonfiction
Melding screening and performance by Eric Hynes

PLAYING ALONG | Music and the movies
The textures of Twin Peaks by Nick Pinkerton

OFF THE PAGE | The art of getting from book to screen
Martin Gabel’s The Lost Moment adapts Henry James’s The Aspern Papers by Nick Davis

SCARE TACTICS | The pleasures of cinematic horror
Sean Byrne by Laura Kern

CURRENTS
New and important work from festivals and elsewhere

THE BIG SCREEN | Reviews of notable new films opening in theaters (hopefully near you)
The Ornithologist by Andrew Chan, Harmonium by Jordan Cronk, Beatriz at Dinner by Violet Lucca, The Bad Batch by Farihah Zaman, The Woman Who Left by Stuart Klawans

Short Takes: The Wedding Plan by Sheila O’Malley, Afterimage by Adam Nayman, The Big Sick by Paula Mejia, Hermia & Helena by Max Nelson, Dawson City: Frozen Time by Nicolas Rapold, The Commune by Laura Kern

HOME MOVIES | Cinema spun, streamed, and beamed
Five Came Back by Steven Mears, 23 Paces to Baker Street by Gina Telaroli, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Films by Andrew Lampert, My 20th Century by Ela Bittencourt, Tramps by John Guerin, The Void by Chloe Lizotte, Willard Ben by Nicolas Rapold, Elio Petri x 2: Property Is No Longer a Theft + Assassin by Yonca Talu

READINGS | Books about all aspects of filmmaking and film culture
On the Eve of the Future: Selected Writings on Film by Annette Michelson, reviewed by Violet Lucca; Utopian Television: Rossellini, Watkins, and Godard Beyond Cinema by Michael Cramer, reviewed by Girish Shambu; and Cinema by Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History by Lucy Fischer, reviewed by Dan Callahan

GRAPHIC DETAIL | The art of the movie poster
Roland Topor by Adrian Curry