Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.
As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our contributors. Here are some of their finest essays, interviews, festival coverage, and more from this year. We’re looking forward to much more in the new one. As always, thank you for reading.
ESSAYS
Illustration by Zoé Mahamès Peters.
The current cinema:
- Sasha Frere-Jones on Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s GIFT
- Philippa Snow on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things
- Adam Nayman on Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms
- Cassie da Costa on RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys
- Amanda Chen on Trương Minh Quý’s Việt and Nam
- Sanoja Bhaumik on Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The Settlers
- Nathalie Olah on Andrea Arnold’s Bird
- Robert Rubsam on Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimera
- Grace Byron on Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow
- Zach Schonfeld on M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Michael Showalter’s The Idea of You
- Sam Sodomsky on Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days
- Maxwell Paparella on Wang Bing’s Youth
- Robert Rubsam on Oz Perkins’s Longlegs
- Kim Hew-Low on Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron
Illustration by Stephanie Monohan.
Repertory:
- Annie Berke on Kirsten Dunst’s period pieces
- Yasmina Price on Claire Denis’s S’en fout la mort (1990)
- Lawrence Garcia on Hong Sang-soo’s late period
- Imogen Sara Smith on Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle (1933)
- Katherine Franco on Shu Lea Cheang’s Fresh Kill (1994)
- Soham Gadre on Bombay Noir
- Tomasz Kolankiewicz on Piotr Szulkin’s “asocial fiction” tetralogy
- Robert Barry on Aki Kaurismäki’s music
- Kerosene Jones on Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974)
- Rafaela Bassili on Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Barren Lives (1963)
Anastasia (Anatole Litvak, 1956).
Retrospectives:
- Matthew Thrift on Anatole Litvak
- Saffron Maeve on Bette Gordon
- Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer on Wojciech Has
- Imogen Sara Smith on Michael Powell before Emeric Pressburger
- Ruairí McCann on Hiroshi Shimizu
- Celluloid Liberation Front on Jocelyne Saab
- David Schwartz on Robert Frank
- Peter Goldberg on Zoë Lund
- Z. W. Lewis on Paul Naschy
- Celluloid Liberation Front on Otar Iosseliani
- Vedant Srinivas on Kumar Shahani
Illustration by Nicole Pavlov.
Film culture:
- Olivia Popp on the nonanthropomorphic turn in cinema
- Mark Asch on portrayals of Roy Cohn
- Jawni Hawn on Korean “comfort women”
- Z. W. Lewis on the figure of the political assassin
- Jonah Jeng on the stunt performer
- Perwana Nazif on Francesc Tosquelles and Radical Psychiatry
- Juan Camilo Velásquez on digital impressionism
- Chris Shields on Elvira and the horror host tradition
- Max Levin on Gregory Markopoulos’s Temenos
L'homme atlantique (Marguerite Duras, 1981).
Book reviews:
- Beatrice Loayza on Marguerite Duras’s My Cinema
- Jonathan Rosenbaum on Reading with Jean-Luc Godard
- Kayleigh Donaldson on Barbra Streisand’s memoirs
- Kaitlyn A. Kramer on Chris Marker’s Les Dépays
- Hicham Awad on Nicole Brenez’s On the Figure in General and the Body in Particular
- Alex Dueben on Dash Shaw’s Blurry
- Kat Sachs on Carrie Courogen’s Miss May Does Not Exist
Bass (Steve McQueen, 2024). Installation view, Dia Beacon, New York, May 12, 2024–April 14, 2025. Photograph by Bill Jacobson Studio, New York.
Around the galleries:
- Madeleine Seidel on Steve McQueen’s Bass
- Re’al Christian on Raqs Media Collective’s The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone
The Notebook Insert is a seasonal supplement on moving-image culture.
Illustration by Lale Westvind.
In the spring, “In the Streets”considered the ever-increasing presence of video in public spaces:
- Nicholas Russell takes in Las Vegas on screen, and the biggest screen in Las Vegas
- Maxwell Paparella recounts the origin story of the Illuminator, the New York–based guerilla projection collective
- Martine Syms weaves a fantasm of seductive advertisement
- Radu Jude finds traces of old Bucharest on billboards and storefronts
- Pan Lu charts the changing face of Hong Kong
- Allee Errico illustrates the fragile faculty of attention battered by the glut of screens
- Amalia Ulman is a nervous flyer, and the in-flight entertainment isn’t helping
Illustration by Ivy Johnson.
In the summer, on the occasion of the XXXIII Olympiad, “The Sporting Image,” looked at athletics on screen:
- Park Chan-wook confesses to not liking soccer
- Caroline Golum visits the video truck of a major-league baseball game
- Chloe Lizotte finds in the pre- and post-game show the death dream of linear television
- Matt Turner reports from the grandstands of two esport tournaments
- Savanah Leaf revisits highlights of her own Olympic volleyball performance
- Sergio de la Pava files a tribute to the sui generis beauty of boxing
- Carson Lund watches the Home run Derby
- Rebecca Liu sends up the on-field interview
- Cassie da Costa regrets the failures of broadcasting long-distance running
- Sanoja Bhaumik works the angles of tennis
INTERVIEWS
Illustration by Stephanie Monohan.
- Andrea Arnold in conversation with Caitlin Quinlan
- Zia Anger in conversation with Mackenzie Lukenbill
- Beth B in conversation with Rachel Pronger
- Sofia Coppola in conversation with Phuong Le
- Bas Devos in conversation with Laura Staab
- Vera Drew in conversation with Kerosene Jones
- Quentin Dupieux in conversation with Leonardo Goi
- Ernie Gehr in conversation with Paul Attard
- Alain Guiraudie in conversation with Beatrice Loayza
- Shiguéhiko Hasumi in conversation with K. F. Watanabe
- Agnieszka Holland in conversation with David Schwartz
- Jazmin Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross in conversation with Dessane Lopez Cassell
- Payal Kapadia in conversation with Leonardo Goi
- Kiyoshi Kurosawa in conversation with Jordan Cronk
- Guy Maddin in conversation with Ryan Akler-Bishop
- Alanis Obomsawin in conversation with Brandon Kaufman
- Aaron Schimberg in conversation with Keva York
- Albert Serra in conversation with Ela Bittencourt
- Tarsem in conversation with Keva York
- Jonathan Rosenbaum in conversation with Thomas Quist
- Isabella Rossellini in conversation with Phuong Le
- John Wilson in conversation with Andrew Northrop
FESTIVAL COVERAGE
Illustration by Maddie Fischer.
In addition to coverage from Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, Venice, Toronto, and New York, our contributors reported on two festivals giving life to films that might otherwise die, and another whose unique geopolitical position makes it a testing ground for a more utopian cinema.
- Forrest Cardamenis on the Nitrate Picture Show and Il Cinema Ritrovato
- Emerson Goo on the Taiwan International Documentary Festival
FILMMAKER CONTRIBUTIONS
You Made Me Feel (Kit Zauhar, 2024). Photograph by Lonz Espinoza.
- Kit Zauhar’s You Made Me Feel
- Rodrigo Moreno on The Delinquents
- Claire Simon on Our Body
- Flóra Anna Buda on 27
- Elizabeth Sankey on Witches
COLUMNS
Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024).
The Current Debate is a column by Leonardo Goi that connects the dots between great writing about a topic in the wider film conversation.
- “Oscars 2024 and the Savior Syndrome”
- “Civil War and the Myth of the ‘Important’ Film”
- “The Grandiloquence of Megalopolis”
I Can't Follow You Anymore (Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2023).
Cutscenes is a column by Matt Turner that explores—and blurs—the intersection of cinema and video games.
- “The Medium Is You: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s Interactive Digital Archives”
- “The Game of Philosophy: Larry Achiampong and David Blandy on Genetic Automata”
Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015).
Movie Poster of the Week is an irregular column by Adrian Curry celebrating the art of the printed film advertisement.
- “The Sean Baker Font”
- “The Illustrated Alain Delon”
- “Sergei Parajanov at 100”
- “The Posters of Eiko Ishioka and Haruo Takino”
- “An Interview with Dawn Baillie”
Thief (Michael Mann, 1981).
One Shot is a column inviting close readings of film grammar’s most basic unit.
- Elissa Suh on Michael Mann’s diners
- Vicky Huang on Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville’s Here and Elsewhere (1976)
- Isabella Miller on Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997)
- Alexander Greenhough on Albert Brooks’s Lost in America (1985)
- Alexander Mooney on Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994)
- Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar (2002)
- Annie Geng on Eliza Hittman’s hands
- Dylan Adamson on João César Monteiro’s God’s Comedy (1995)
- Dan Schindel on Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006)
