The Fight

Nov 11, 2002 — A second Monterey International Pop Festival has for the past month been put in jeopardy by a vicious handful of citizens, cops, and city officials in a small-town drama straight from Peyton Place and The Invaders.

Jun 5, 1995 — Kenji Mizoguchi departed abruptly from his earlier sentimental films into a world of acute realism with this bold critique of the position of women in contemporary Japanese society.

Dec 2, 1990 — In Martin Scorsese’s hands, the camera is not simply a recording device, but an x-ray machine—and it shows us close-ups of the human soul.

May 29, 2024 — This Oscar-winning courtroom drama revolves around one of director Justine Triet’s most complex creations—a high-achieving female protagonist whose motivations remain tenaciously mysterious.

Oct 18, 2022 — Drawing from Latin American folklore, Jayro Bustamente conjures an intimate, supernatural tale that engages with Guatemala’s history of violence.

Sep 9, 2022 — James Wong Howe was a fighter, and he learned how to be one over the course of a turbulent upbringing. Born Wong Tung Jim in 1899, in the Chinese province of Guangdong, the man who would become one of the...

Aug 26, 2022 — In a pivotal early scene in this baseball classic, director Ron Shelton mischievously uses two contrasting rock tunes to comment on disparate versions of masculinity.

Jul 13, 2022 — Stylistically informed by film noir, Martin Scorsese’s searing drama plumbs male violence and rage through a boxing champ’s self-destruction.

Feb 23, 2021 — Released in 1985, during the exuberant flowering of films by women brought on by second-wave feminism, Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk now feels less of those years than like a harbinger of the #MeToo movement, an early challenge to a cultural...

Dec 15, 2020 — One day in the late 1990s, when I was a young staff member at an art and media magazine, my boss asked me to interview an esteemed creative director of an ad agency. A few months earlier, that same magazine...