The Passage

May 27, 2025 — A landmark of independent cinema, Charles Burnett’s debut feature captures daily life in Watts, Los Angeles, with a depth and precision that evokes the history of Black American music.

Dec 10, 2024 — In this brilliant adaptation, Joel and Ethan Coen find a kindred spirit in novelist Cormac McCarthy, whose abiding themes—including destiny, the American West, and the contest between our better natures and our survival instinct—mirror their own.

Nov 20, 2023 — This month brings new books on Godard and Bergman, novelists moonlighting as film critics, and biographies of Lena Horne and Elizabeth Taylor.

Oct 31, 2023 — With the full force of her imagination, director Nikyatu Jusu examines the complicated nature of Black motherhood, as well as the importance of Black communion as an antidote to racial oppression.

Jun 20, 2023 — Two young San Francisco residents navigate the potential for romance and their opposing views on race in Barry Jenkins’s moving debut feature.

Feb 23, 2023 — Notes on new features from Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Margarethe von Trotta, and Volker Koepp.

Feb 14, 2023 — This month’s roundup opens with an appreciation of Preston Sturges and wraps with a book launch serving donuts and damn fine coffee.

Apr 20, 2021 — 1. “I Felt Nothing” In September 2019, about halfway between claiming the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May and earning multiple Oscar nominations in January 2020, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite was briefly upstaged by a movie from the director’s past....

Nov 17, 2020 — Along with Dead Man (1995), his previous narrative feature, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai marks a quantum leap in the Jim Jarmusch universe—a discovery of history (both antiquity and tradition) that carries with it a sense of gravity and even tragedy...

Jul 14, 2020 — We’d hoped to be making and watching movies in theaters again by now. That’s not happening, so now what?