Press Play

"The best video essay source on the web." (Roger Ebert) This web site is built on a mix of original video essays and critical, personal writing about film, TV, and their connection to broader cultural concerns. Co-founded by Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for New York Magazine, and Ken Cancelosi, it is overseen by Editor-in-Chief Max Winter.

THE REGULARS

Monthly Archives

RAISED IN FEAR: Who Can Kill a Child?

Blogs

Who Can Kill a Child (1976) is a relatively obscure Spanish horror film directed by Narcisco Ibanez Serrador, but it should be much better known, and not only by people like me, sick of having to pretend to be awed by how wonderful children are.

By Jed Mayer
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May 28, 2013 11:11 AM
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7 Comments

Festivals

Few films have captured the level of complex pragmatism it must take for a desperate person to survive in a completely new place with no support or ideological context. James Gray’s arresting period-piece melodrama "The Immigrant" achieves this feat.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 24, 2013 10:36 PM
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1 Comment

Festivals

In Nicolas Winding Refn’s "Only God Forgives," to witness God is to experience the devil.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 22, 2013 4:02 PM
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1 Comment

Festivals

After nearly four straight days of rain, sunshine has finally graced the Croissette. It’s glorious. Wardrobes have gotten significantly skimpier and smiles have broadened greatly, and everyone at Cannes seems to be settling in.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 21, 2013 1:44 PM
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0 Comments

Festivals

Plenty of films exist about struggling young artists trying to be great and failing in the process. But Joel and Ethan Coen’s "Inside Llewyn Davis" is unique in focusing on a great struggling young artist resigned to the idea of his own impending failure.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 19, 2013 3:20 PM
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0 Comments

Festivals

Thick grey clouds paint the coastal horizon, and rain keeps falling. Massive yachts bob up and down in the choppy water while scattering festival attendees take cover under umbrella canopies.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 18, 2013 7:39 PM
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0 Comments

Festivals

Jia Zhang-ke sees modern day China as an expansive minefield of potential narratives, each one ready to trigger its own perspective on the countless institutional and societal issues that ultimately impact identity, gender roles, and economic expansion.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 17, 2013 12:04 PM
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0 Comments

Blogs

It seems to me there are several different things going on in Drew Christie's animation of a sentence from the Nathan Englander story “The Reader.”

By Max Winter
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May 13, 2013 8:46 AM
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0 Comments

Blogs

You never forget the first time you fall in love, especially in the movies. My moment came when I was eight years old, at a Saturday matinee in a cramped multiplex theater. Setting my sights high, the object of my adoration was Kali, Hindu goddess of Time, Change, and Death, brought to life by the magical powers of Ray Harryhausen

By Jed Mayer
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May 10, 2013 8:40 AM
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0 Comments

Video

Wong Kar-Wai, whose long-awaited The Grandmaster opens in August, is not about plot. Wong Kar-wai is about motion and emotion. As my friend Nelson Carvajal's new video suggests, he's about the moment within the moment, the eternal in the now. Beautiful neighbors pass in a stairwell and exchange lingering looks, or talk more softly than they need to so that they can be face-to-face. The camera (usually Chris Doyle's) doesn't merely record or represent: it scopes out, insinuates, measures and caresses. All is texture. Physical texture. Emotional texture. What it feels like. What it really is. What you dream it is. What you dream it was.