The Key

Aug 11, 2008 — Every Guy Maddin movie creates the illusion of a secret history. His willfully primitive cut-rate spectacles seem like artifacts, reanimated bits of cultural detritus, but also like hauntings, the return of the cinematic repressed. From the start, Maddin’s sensibility was...

Oct 15, 2001 — The music in Benjamin Christensen’s classic constantly refers to something deeper, creating a sort of deep pity in preparation for the ending of the film.

Apr 28, 2026 — In April 1992, John Singleton was en route to the set of his second film when he heard the verdict on the radio. A predominantly white jury had acquitted four police officers who, a year earlier, had been caught on...

Jan 20, 2026 — A smash hit at the box office, this electrifying adventure film established the team of director Michael Curtiz and actors Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland as one of the most iconic creative partnerships in Hollywood.

Oct 8, 2025 — We remember an artist, teacher, and filmmaker who unleashed realms of depth from two-dimensional images.

Sep 24, 2025 — Jacques Audiard’s Paris-set drama about small-time hoodlum with musical ambitions crystallized his identity as an artist with a high degree of confidence and control.

May 27, 2025 — In the singular mid-1980s TV show Eternity’s Pillar, the jazz iconoclast gives viewers a chance to experience the healing powers of her music—and the intense spiritual practice that fuels it.

Feb 19, 2025 — Gus Van Sant’s lyrical exploration of addiction and faith—adapted from an autobiographical novel by James Fogle—influenced cinematic drug depictions throughout the nineties and helped to initiate a wave of American independent filmmaking.

Oct 15, 2024 — This jolt of delicious weirdness from Japanese New Wave master Masahiro Shinoda is both a reverent salute to Kabuki and a self-consciously postmodern take on its traditions.

Aug 12, 2024 — The great actor creates an unforgettable portrait of a man worn down by the world in Tamara Jenkins’s darkly funny and deeply moving family drama.