Essays

A brutal critique of the American dream, Carl Franklin’s 1995 thriller explicitly confronts the racialized implications of classic film noir.

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.

Stylistically informed by film noir, Martin Scorsese’s searing drama plumbs male violence and rage through a boxing champ’s self-destruction.

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.

In David Lean’s Venice-set romance, a fleeting love affair prompts a woman’s self-exploration.

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.

Boasting a larger-than-life Divine, John Waters’ underground classic finds the sublime in the ridiculous.

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.

By centering an empowered Black hero, Gordon Parks reimagined the detective genre and exposed its racial politics.

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.

Ekwa Msangi’s intimate feature debut pushes the conventions of the immigrant family drama.

Wayne Wang’s breakthrough feature, a milestone in Asian American cinema, is a humorous and intimate snapshot of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Billy Wilder’s classic film noir is a powerful meditation on masculinity, desire, and the fantasies of white America.

Mira Nair’s sumptuous second feature explores migration, rebellion, and romance across racial borders in the American South.

Juzo Itami’s tragicomic directorial debut has scandalous fun with the Japanese traditions governing death.

Joseph Losey’s sumptuous portrait of Nazi-occupied Paris sees an icy Alain Delon as an art dealer on a Kafkaesque quest for identity.

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.

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.

Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist fable deploys barbed humor and surreal flourishes to depict class solidarity and human kindness in postwar Italy.

Frank Tashlin directs Jayne Mansfield to her cartoonish limits in this outrageous showbiz satire that is a testament to the power of bad taste.

Theodore Witcher’s moody, sensual romance foregrounds Black artists and their milieu, upending stereotypes about urban life.

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.

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.

A parable of wayward women in a world without mothers, Márta Mészáros’s 1975 feature catapulted the Hungarian auteur to international prominence.