In Case You Missed It: Our Essential Reads of 2021
As the holiday season begins to wind down, we’re proud to close out another year in our online magazine by looking back at a few of our favorite essays and interviews. We hope that the work we’ve shared with you—from tributes to cinematic trailblazers and illuminating conversations with contemporary filmmakers to first-person meditations on the pleasures of moviegoing—has helped sustain your love of film history and culture during this difficult year. Enjoy this selection of writing by some of the most brilliant minds around, and look out for our return in January!
JANUARY
From the Margins: What the Archives Show Us About Trans Cinema and Audiences
By Caden Mark Gardner
This feature sheds light on a string of pioneering publications from the past century that reveal how trans audiences responded to seeing their community depicted on-screen.
FEBRUARY
The Acrobatic Grace of Cary Grant
By Angelica Jade Bastién
In the actor’s inimitable comedic work, he undercut his trademark suavity with moments of slapstick mayhem, creating a contrast that hinted at the chasm between his private life and public persona.
MARCH
Shadow Sides: The Spiritual Journeys of Nina Menkes
By Sarah Resnick
The director of Queen of Diamonds has made hypnotic and elusive films that double as Jungian explorations of her alter egos.
APRIL
Looking Through the Veil: The Theology of Movie Afterlives
By Donna Bowman
What lies beyond the grave? This feature delves into cinematic visions of the great beyond that speak to our shared anxieties about mortality and human responsibility.
MAY
Indigenous Cinema and the Limits of Auteurism
By Girish Shambu
The world’s largest Indigenous film festival challenges the individualist ethos of the dominant cinema culture—and invites us to think outside the exclusionary box.
JUNE
Prisoners of Second Avenue
By Benjamin Dreyer
In this installment of our First Person series, the best-selling author and editor finds an unlikely domestic comfort in an unsung Neil Simon adaptation starring Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft.
JULY
The Stars in Wong Kar Wai’s Universe
By Andrew Chan, Walter Chaw, Phoebe Chen, Amanda Lee Koe, Aliza Ma, Ryan Swen, Oliver Wang, Charles Yu, and Genevieve Yue
AUGUST
To the Tune of Mortality: “The Gondola Song” in Ikiru
By Geoffrey O’Brien
This entry in our Songbook series considers the power of a 1910s ballad used in Akira Kurosawa’s portrait of a man’s final days.
SEPTEMBER
From Her to Eternity: The Enduring Icy Hotness of Deborah Kerr
By Jessica Kiang
OCTOBER
The director of Chocolate Babies and Jason and Shirley weighs in on the past, present, and future of LGBTQ cinema and the role of sensuality on-screen.
Other highlights: Emory Douglas on the Black Panthers and Melvin Van Peebles, Rebecca Carroll in conversation with Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Michael Koresky on The Delta
NOVEMBER
Fatal Attraction: Women on the Serial-Killer Movies That Thrill Them
By Megan Abbott, Angelica Jade Bastién, Elena Gorfinkel, Beatrice Loayza, Nadine Smith, and Kelli Weston
In this group of short essays, six writers confront their fascination with films about murderers, including David Fincher’s haunting procedural Zodiac, Jane Campion’s subversive erotic thriller In the Cut, and Bob Clark’s cult classic Black Christmas.
Other highlights: Larissa Pham on The Gleaners and I, Pamela Hutchinson on silent-film pioneers, and Karen Tongson on the music of Tootsie
DECEMBER
Parables of Perception: Three Films by Mani Kaul
By Ratik Asokan
The misunderstood pioneer of Indian art cinema charted a path of his own through stylistic innovations that illuminated his characters’ inner lives.
More: Features
Blood and Guts in High School
John Fawcett’s 2001 cult classic Ginger Snaps—a highlight of the Criterion Channel’s High School Horror collection—uses the werewolf trope to explore the psychosexual anxieties of female adolescence.
Linda Darnell’s Tough and Timeless Women
Despite being one of the most mesmerizing performers of 1940s Hollywood, Darnell struggled throughout her career to be seen as more than a great beauty.
Noir by Gaslight
A collection of films on the Criterion Channel combine the moodiness of noir with late-nineteenth-century period detail and dark romance.
The Man Behind the Wheel
Amid the anxiety and social turbulence of the Nixon era, car movies served to explore and embody the contradictions of American masculinity.