Best in Show

Aug 17, 2010 — In his defiantly maverick directing career, which yielded only ten features in thirty-five years, Maurice Pialat (1925–2003) was a stimulant and irritant, agitating the cozy pool of French cinema. His first effort, the lyrically bitter short essay film L’amour existe...

May 21, 2001 — Akira Kurosawa’s period film not only commemorated historical Japanese myths with new, vivid feeling but also created the source for many of the enduring entertainment tropes in world cinema today.

Oct 19, 2026 — Throughout his enormously influential body of work, the great director explored the conflict between humankind’s obsession with control and our capacity for error and failure.

Jul 30, 2026 — Gene Tierney, Robert Kramer, Chantal Akerman, and Alfred Hitchcock are among the many personalities featured this month.

Jul 9, 2026 — Deep Dives One of the most mischievous figures in world cinema, Věra Chytilová is still best known for Daisies, the daring 1966 film whose gonzo vision of female rebellion and empowerment launched her into the public eye. This Czechoslovak New...

Sep 26, 2025 — One of the most provocative subgenres of 1970s exploitation cinema, nunsploitation explores the collision of sex and religious dogma through stories of desperately horny women of the cloth.

Jun 27, 2025 — We’re revisiting 1975, reassessing 2025, and reading about Serge Daney and Hong Sangsoo.

Jun 24, 2024 — Costars and critics remember an outstanding actor who neither looked nor sounded like a movie star.

Jan 12, 2024 — This week’s given us essays on Chantal Akerman and Edward Yang and conversations with Takeshi Kitano and Robert Bresson.

Oct 26, 2023 — Ever since he began working with the Miami-based film festival and collective Third Horizon in 2016, Jonathan Ali has been finding ways of celebrating Caribbean cinema and how it captures the irreducible complexity of the region and its diaspora. He...