My Courses

The Venice Film Festival is one of the most essential film events of the year, the bridge to the fall film-going season, and an event that launches future award winners, top ten entries, and beloved classics. As film profiles go, it’s also a remarkably diverse event, with movies like “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Joker: Folie a…

It was in 2015 that I received my first invitation to the Venice Film Festival from Peter Cowie, the venerable scholar and critic. His new book, “God and the Devil: The Life And Work of Ingmar Bergman,” is a crowning achievement in Bergman studies, a highlight from a master who hasn’t lost a step over…

There is always abundant suspense in the Telluride Film Festival (TFF) lineup; it’s kept secret until the Thursday before the festival. This year, for its 51st edition, TFF’s programming has a heavy emphasis on exposing and exploring some of the extreme realities we’re experiencing politically and socially. Telluride’s curation is extraordinary. I find that the…

A ferociously satisfying update of “First Blood” with a rustic Southern setting, “Rebel Ridge” furthers writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s pattern of trapping his protagonists in tight spots and making them fight their way out, even as it recalibrates the grisly survivalism of “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room,” along with the atmospheric tension of his Alaska-set “Hold…

Set in a nondescript working-class suburb of Sweden, “Paradise is Burning” focuses on three sisters whose mother is terminally absent. When the school begins to suspect their mother has taken off (again) a meeting with social services looms. This ticking clock adds tension as the eldest girl Laura (Bianca Delbravo) searches for someone to stand…