In the Cut

Sep 2, 2019 — Dark Passages Thieves’ Highway A hay cart trundles through a sunny field above Fresno, California, in the opening shot of Thieves’ Highway. This is not an image you expect to see in film noir, which most often breeds in cities, alienated from the...

Apr 9, 2013 — This essay by novelist, playwright, and culture critic Gary Indiana originally appeared in the 1992 book Everything Is Permitted: The Making of “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs’s work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists,...

Oct 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...

Sep 11, 2020 — On our minds this week: New Taiwan Cinema of the 1980s, Black cinema’s “paradoxical role in American cultural history,” the new Brooklyn Rail, and more.

Jun 17, 2020 — At a 2012 screening of work by the late artist and filmmaker, programmer Ed Halter declared: “Luther Price is Brakhage after Punk.”

Sep 26, 2018 — The completion of the project Welles began in the 1970s is one of the major cinematic events of the year.

Mar 31, 2026 — Violently nihilistic, simultaneously energizing and crushing, Tsui Hark’s remake of the martial-arts classic One-Armed Swordsman captures the zeitgeist of pre–1997 handover Hong Kong.

Mar 27, 2026 — The first documentary feature about the rock legends, Charlie Is My Darling captures the band as a group of consummate musicians coming into their fame, fully committed to their craft and enjoying one another’s company.

Jul 8, 2025 — The maestro of existential dread is celebrated in New York, Vancouver, and Columbus, Ohio.

Sep 11, 2024 — Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays a deeply frustrated woman in Leigh’s first film set in contemporary Britain since Another Year (2010).