Writing with Fire

Sep 28, 2021 — Melvin Van Peebles’s feature debut riffs on the French New Wave to tell a love story that portrays interracial intimacy and unflinchingly confronts the distortions of racism.

Jan 24, 2018 — Wildlife, an adaptation of Richard Ford’s 1990 novel, “finds Paul Dano transporting his usual reserve as a performer (bellowing country preachers excepted) from one side of the camera to the other,” writes the A.V. Club’s A. A. Dowd. “Set in...

Nov 7, 2017 — A haughty socialite is torn between the affections of three men in George Cukor’s blissful comedy of manners.

Nov 2, 2022 — The director of Samson and Delilah and Sweet Country discusses his formative artistic encounters, his eclectic professional background, and on-screen Indigenous representation.

Nov 22, 2022 — Spike Lee’s transcendent portrait of an American hero is an urgent call for the nation to live up to everything it claims to be.

Jul 8, 2021 — Some critics find it better than Synonyms, and while others don’t, everyone agrees that this is the Israeli director’s “most radical movie yet.”

Jul 6, 2021 — Howard Hawks’s madcap battle of the sexes is a reminder of how necessary and sneakily profound silliness can be.

Mar 23, 2021 — “Pleasure,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “is a safer guide than either right or duty.” Surely this is true when it comes to watching films. While cinema can be edifying, most of us go to the...

Oct 30, 2015 — The following interview was originally published in the 2005 edition of filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s book Lynch on Lynch. The interviews included in the book were conducted by Rodley between 1993 and 2005. For Criterion’s release of Mulholland Dr.,...

May 22, 2012 — These five films chart the unlikely ascendance of a hero of American underground cinema.