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Mary Helena Clark and Mike Gibisser’s A Common Sequence, explores how our ideas of the commons have changed in our capitalistic, tech-driven present. The film uses three case studies: the first focuses on efforts to conserve and study the achoque salamander in Mexico, known for its regenerative properties; the second explores the use of artificial intelligence in apple picking and harvesting; and the third digs into the ways in which genetics is fast becoming a prime site for data mining....

Orson Welles as a student at The Todd School, circa 1930 Among the many misconceptions about Orson Welles—e.g., that none of his films made money, that all his protégés betrayed him—one that has garnered curious, unfounded support is that he was apolitical. Perhaps his imperious manner suggests ivory-tower detachment from issues on the ground; maybe his connection to Shakespeare links him more to statecraft of centuries past. Either way, it’s a false assumption to make of the man who produced radical plays for the Federal Theatre Project, spoke fervidly in support of the New Deal and against racism, wrote a newspaper column on political affairs in the 1940s, and considered running for Senate on behalf of Wisconsin (a seat which instead went to Joseph McCarthy)....

Napoleon (Ridley Scott, 2023) More than a republican or a royalist, Napoleon Bonaparte was—forgive me—a disruptor. “World history on horseback” is how Hegel described the general-turned–self-crowned emperor, and accordingly, his story has long triggered film directors’ aspirations to technological innovation and heroic vision—from the unprecedented technique of Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927), perhaps the most euphoric expression of silent cinema’s world-remaking potential, to Sergei Bondarchuk’s Soviet-era Waterloo (1970), with its mass mobilization of real-life soldiers as extras, to Stanley Kubrick’s notoriously unrealized epic biopic....

Tatum O’Neal Paper Moon, age 10 Magaret O’Brien Meet Me in St. Louis, 7 Jodie Foster Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 12 Enzo Staiola The Bicycle Thieves, 9 Kåre Hedebrant Let the Right One In, 11 Ana Torrent The Spirit of the Beehive, 7 Heather Matarazzo Welcome to the Dollhouse, 12 Jean-Pierre Cargol The Wild Child, 12 Christina Ricci The Addams Family, 11 Drew Barrymore E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, 7...

Back in the day, Tucson photographer Bob Broder used to string for The Arizona Republic. Eric Kroll, another local—and former Taschen book editor—recently unearthed a stash of negatives Broder shot on assignment in 1968. The focal point was Andy Warhol. The Pope of Pop had gone West, avec entourage, to shoot Lonesome Cowboys. Warhol was originally invited by yet another Tucson character, one Charles Littler, founder of the artist’s community, Rancho Linda Vista....

Five Easy Pieces It comes out all at once, in a rush, like a word you’ve never seen before that’s just snuck up on you, a neological surprise in an E.E. Cummings line: “Palmapodaca.” Now run that back. Jack Nicholson and Karen Black are in the front seat; the pair of strung-out broads they’ve just rescued from a minor car wreck on the side of a road somewhere (one of them is Toni Basil, the other isn’t) are in the rear—four uneasy people from Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (70)....

Whores’ Glory Whores’ Glory is a movie meditation on the rites of love—a baroque documentary about hookers and their dreams, daily grinds, and anxieties, shot as events unfold in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico. Why the controversy? Because Whores’ Glory doesn’t confirm what the audience already thinks it knows. Glawogger doesn’t condemn prostitution, and he doesn’t present the hookers in his film only as victims and the johns and pimps as criminals....

Armageddon The common theory among cinephiles is that the Stephen Hopkins, Jan de Bonts, and Tony Scotts of this world are preternaturally impatient and mindlessly hyperactive, which seems ridiculous when you consider all the calculation behind their films. An acquaintance of mine pined for the clarity that Hawks would have brought to the asteroid-drilling scenes in Armageddon, a crowning achievement and my one 100 percent guilty pleasure. Indeed, there are long stretches during those scenes when I had no idea who or what was doing what to what or whom, when the screen was awash in an ocean of hurtling rocks and bodies, white smoke jets, scowling faces, asteroid fissures, uncoiling cables, heavy machinery, and, most delightfully of all, bullets sprayed from a gatling gun....

May December (Todd Haynes, 2023) At the close of the first week of Cannes 2023, Jonathan Glazer’s formidable fourth feature, The Zone of Interest, arrived like a deep wave of shivers. The quasi-experimental Holocaust film, Glazer’s first feature-length title in 10 years, is an adaptation of the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis (who died of cancer at 73 on May 19, the day of the film’s premiere)....

In the introductions to the first screening, a distinction was made between faith and religion. I belong to a generation of people that are free to confront religion and spirituality without any fears. We are comfortable. But we don’t trust in this world. For me, religion, spirituality, faith are all the same thing: art. So art can also be a spiritual practice. For me it’s a religious act. What is religion?...

What, so far, is the defining movie of the Trump era? Is it Get Out, which takes on contemporary America with a mixture of disbelieving laughter and outright horror? Is it Wonder Woman, which gives us a savior in the person of a tough, powerful female lead? Is it La La Land, which just wants to get away from it all? And more to the point, is the label “defining movie of the Trump era” actually a death sentence that will only make a movie look more quaint and dated when future generations excavate it?...