The Classic

Greil Marcus is the author of Lipstick Traces, The Shape of Things to Come, and The Manchurian Candidate in the BFI Film Classics series. With Werner Sollors, he is the editor of A New Literary History of America (Harvard, 2009)....

Adam Nayman is a critic, lecturer, and author based in Toronto. He writes for the Ringer, Reverse Shot, the New Yorker, and Sight and Sound, and teaches cinema studies at the University of Toronto. He has written several books on...

Jan 20, 2026 — This month, leap into a century of cinema’s greatest stunts, feel the ache of thwarted romance and bittersweet yearning, or get into trouble with the Depression-era hustlers of Mervyn LeRoy’s pre-Code films.

Jul 17, 2024 — This month, we’re celebrating the expansive, archetype-exploding films of Paul Thomas Anderson, as well as the career of his frequent collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Jun 27, 2023 — With a divided self that reflected the fissures in his country in the wake of World War II, the most courageous and dangerous Italian artist of his generation transcended dogma and resisted affiliations.

Mar 10, 2023 — Primarily known as a costume and production designer, this multitalented visionary deserves to be more widely recognized as one of the most important creative forces behind the Czechoslovak New Wave.

May 17, 2019 — In the news this week: Francis Ford Coppola, Raúl Ruiz, Joanna Hogg, and Lou Ye.

Oct 1, 2018 — A breathtaking, rarely screened vérité document encapsulates the social and aesthetic sea change that transformed France in the spring of 1968.

Mar 12, 2007 — Kon Ichikawa’s incendiary and extraordinarily brutal war film renders the emotional carnage that festers long after the battle’s end.

Jan 22, 2007 — Spencer Gordon Bennet’s eclectic science fiction–adventure movie bundles a serious patriotic message within its retelling of the Odysseus myth.