Essays
Devil in a Blue Dress: Crossing the Line
A brutal critique of the American dream, Carl Franklin’s 1995 thriller explicitly confronts the racialized implications of classic film noir.
Drive My Car: Grace Notes
Centered on a grieving theater director and his driver, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning drama is a quiet meditation on the mysteries of communication, the flexibility of truth, and the search for honesty.
Raging Bull: American Minotaur
Stylistically informed by film noir, Martin Scorsese’s searing drama plumbs male violence and rage through a boxing champ’s self-destruction.
Raging Bull: Never Got Me Down
Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating boxing opus—one of the last films on which he enjoyed unequivocal studio support—emerged from a Hollywood in transition.
Summertime: Souvenirs
In David Lean’s Venice-set romance, a fleeting love affair prompts a woman’s self-exploration.
Okja: Big Love
Bong Joon Ho’s fantasy blockbuster explores the follies of global capitalism through the lens of the meat industry—and a young girl and her “superpig” best friend.
Pink Flamingos: The Battle of Filth
Boasting a larger-than-life Divine, John Waters’ underground classic finds the sublime in the ridiculous.
The Worst Person in the World: Lost and Found
Part rom-com, part existential meditation, the final installment in Joachim Trier’s Oslo trilogy dignifies the fluctuating desires of a woman on the cusp of thirty.
Shaft: Power Moves
By centering an empowered Black hero, Gordon Parks reimagined the detective genre and exposed its racial politics.
Rouge: Love Out of Time
Two eras of Hong Kong history collide in this exquisite ghost story, which solidified director Stanley Kwan’s status as one of cinema’s truest romantics.
Farewell Amor: Coming Over
Ekwa Msangi’s intimate feature debut pushes the conventions of the immigrant family drama.
Chan Is Missing: Lost (and Not Found) in Chinatown
Wayne Wang’s breakthrough feature, a milestone in Asian American cinema, is a humorous and intimate snapshot of San Francisco’s Chinatown.
The Black Heart of Double Indemnity
Billy Wilder’s classic film noir is a powerful meditation on masculinity, desire, and the fantasies of white America.
Mississippi Masala: The Ocean of Comings and Goings
Mira Nair’s sumptuous second feature explores migration, rebellion, and romance across racial borders in the American South.
The Funeral: At a Loss
Juzo Itami’s tragicomic directorial debut has scandalous fun with the Japanese traditions governing death.
Mr. Klein: It’s All in the Name
Joseph Losey’s sumptuous portrait of Nazi-occupied Paris sees an icy Alain Delon as an art dealer on a Kafkaesque quest for identity.
Eyimofe (This Is My Desire): Floating Currencies
In their ambitious debut feature, brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri capture the vibrancy of contemporary Lagos while also showing the desperation with which its two protagonists seek to leave it.
’Round Midnight: Return from Exile
A longtime lover of jazz, Bertrand Tavernier honors its legacy by throwing the spotlight on real musicians—including legendary tenor sax player Dexter Gordon—improvising on-screen.
Miracle in Milan: It Is Goodness
Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist fable deploys barbed humor and surreal flourishes to depict class solidarity and human kindness in postwar Italy.
The Girl Can’t Help It: The Fame Game
Frank Tashlin directs Jayne Mansfield to her cartoonish limits in this outrageous showbiz satire that is a testament to the power of bad taste.
love jones: Sweet Home Chicago
Theodore Witcher’s moody, sensual romance foregrounds Black artists and their milieu, upending stereotypes about urban life.
The Last Waltz: Long, Hard Road
At once euphoric and elegiac, Martin Scorsese’s concert documentary captures the members of the Band on the brink of spiritual and physical collapse as they mount their transcendent final send-off.
The Flight of the Phoenix: Flight or Fight
In Robert Aldrich’s epic disaster film, James Stewart leads a pack of temperamentally different men as they struggle to survive in the face of the unknown—a template that would go on to influence Hollywood blockbusters for decades to come.
Adoption: Wayward Faces
A parable of wayward women in a world without mothers, Márta Mészáros’s 1975 feature catapulted the Hungarian auteur to international prominence.