Contributors
Anthony Lane
Anthony Lane is a New Yorker staff writer. From 1993 to 2024, he served as a film critic. Before coming to the magazine, he worked at the Independent, in London, where he was appointed deputy literary editor in 1989 and, a year later, a film critic for the Independent on Sunday. In 2001, his reviews received the National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism. His writings for The New Yorker are collected in the book “Nobody’s Perfect.”
All Work
- The Current Cinema
The Funny, Forward, and Bracingly Political “Joyland”
The Pakistani director Saim Sadiq’s sensuous film mounts an indictment of misogyny and transphobia without ever lecturing us.
March 31, 2023
- The Current Cinema
The Thief as Artist in “Inside”
Starring Willem Dafoe as a stranded art thief, Vasilis Katsoupis’s film pushes the heist genre in the direction of performance art.
March 17, 2023
- Cultural Comment
The 2023 Oscars Were a Vanity Fair
The ceremony was filled with royals, courtiers, fools, a donkey, and a cocaine bear.
March 13, 2023
- The Current Cinema
“Cocaine Bear” and the Problem of High-Concept Plots
Like “Snakes on a Plane” and “We Bought a Zoo,” Elizabeth Banks’s film provides exactly what the title promises. Then what?
February 24, 2023
- The Current Cinema
The Phantom Menace of “Knock at the Cabin”
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller abounds in compositional devilry, but the frights don’t leave a lasting impression.
February 3, 2023
- The Current Cinema
“When You Finish Saving the World” Is Very Jesse Eisenberg
Twitching with the same unease that characterizes his performances, Eisenberg’s directorial début is taut with unhappiness but allows itself to be funny.
January 20, 2023
- The Current Cinema
An Anatomy of a Murder in “Saint Omer”
Based on an actual case, the first feature by the French documentarian Alice Diop is a troubling story of matricide, racism, and sorcery.
January 6, 2023
- The Current Cinema
Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” Goes Nowhere, in a Mad Rush
The “La La Land” director’s over-the-top paean to silent Hollywood, starring Margot Robbie as a hopeful actress and Brad Pitt as an affable superstar, amounts to a frenzied scrapbook.
December 23, 2022
- The Current Cinema
“Avatar: The Way of Water” Is Split by James Cameron’s Contradictory Instincts
In the “Avatar” sequel, Cameron’s two strains—the vegan who wants to plumb the mysteries of nature, and the hard-core weapons guy—are at odds.
December 16, 2022
- The Current Cinema
Brendan Fraser’s Soft Quizzicality in “The Whale”
Darren Aronofsky’s film is earnestly determined to present obesity as tragedy, but its star manages to project a sweetness of nature through the layers of prosthetic fat.
December 2, 2022
