Best of the Best

Dec 13, 2022 — A departure from the tales of sex and violence that defined Black cinema in the early 1970s, Michael Schultz’s beloved coming-of-age film celebrates the emotional bonds among a group of young Black men.

Jul 13, 2022 — 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.

Feb 28, 2022 — Rendez-Vous with French Cinema brings César winners and Arnaud Desplechin programs a series for FIAF.

Nov 18, 2021 — Brief notes on films arriving from Mike Mills, Tatiana Huezo, Jane Campion, Robert Greene, and Radu Jude.

Oct 12, 2021 — In Raoul Walsh’s elegy for the Depression-era archetype of the noble outlaw, Humphrey Bogart plays an old-fashioned desperado who has outlived his time.

Jul 20, 2021 — Dismissed as gossip-column fodder in its time, Jacques Deray’s cooly enigmatic villa thriller is an exploration of masculine vanity and feminine disillusion.

Jan 14, 2021 — Herman Mankiewicz—a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter writing the first draft of Orson Welles’s 1941 biopic about William Randolph Hearst—may seem an unlikely hero for a 2020 biopic. He is rarely remembered today outside of cinephile circles, but in telling his story,...

Aug 10, 2020 — A slyly feminist film by the only woman directing in the Hollywood studio system of her thirties-and-early-forties heyday, Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance stands as one of the era’s most groundbreaking—and entertaining—backstage sagas. And as it turned out, a different...

Feb 11, 2020 — How might four history-making Oscars impact movies from here on out?

Dec 6, 2019 — Serge Daney on Sergei Parajanov, James Quandt on Robert Bresson, and Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin on Maurice Pialat are among this week’s highlights.