The Place

Apr 24, 2024 — This month brings a collection of Chantal Akerman’s writing, analyses of Ozu and Kubrick, and list of the best Hollywood books ever.

Dec 13, 2023 — Critics have come around on his turns in Barry Lyndon and The Driver, and toward the end, he started patching things up with his family.

Dec 5, 2023 — A tight-lipped stranger arrives in a gold-mining town. After checking into a hotel, he heads to Charlie’s Saloon, one of those gambling palaces with glittering chandeliers and be-feathered hostesses. He is told that Charlie “runs the town” and “owns a...

Jul 20, 2023 — The eye candy pops, the gags fly, and the debate over what selling out even means anymore rages.

Oct 25, 2022 — One of the few American films of its era directed by a Black woman, Kasi Lemmons’s feature debut advances a critique of patriarchy and asks questions about gender and sexuality that still resonate today.

Feb 2, 2022 — Released in 1972, Perry Henzell’s thrilling drama The Harder They Come, starring real-life reggae icon Jimmy Cliff as singer-turned-outlaw Ivanhoe Martin, was among the first films to prominently feature reggae music both as subject matter and on its soundtrack. The...

Jan 27, 2022 — We’re celebrating Black History Month with tributes to trailblazing artists like Harry Belafonte, Melvin Van Peebles, and documentary master Stanley Nelson.

Oct 20, 2021 — This uncanny tale of existential anxiety stands out as the most rigorously pared-down American science-fiction film of the 1950s.

Sep 29, 2021 — Luchino Visconti’s scandalous antifascist melodrama envisions the liquidation of desire with expressionistic panache.

Sep 28, 2021 — The first Black-directed movie musical of the modern film era, Melvin Van Peebles’s drama illuminates the cultural and political concerns of working-class Black people with delight and fancy.