The War Room

May 28, 2024 — With just a few exceptions, critics are generally pleased with this year’s awards.

May 14, 2024 — Despite the harsh critical drubbing it received upon its release in 1960, Michael Powell’s lurid tale of obsession and violence is now widely regarded as a masterpiece—and as a key inspiration for an entire subgenre of “slasher” movies.

Jan 29, 2024 — Jurors, audiences, and critics seem to agree that 2024 is off to a promising start.

Nov 16, 2022 — After glimpsing his great-great-grandfather on-screen, a writer searches for the history of a landmark silent film.

Sep 27, 2022 — Darius Marder’s Oscar-nominated drama captures the isolation and despair of a man who suddenly goes deaf and struggles in vain to regain his former life.

Aug 17, 2022 — Our late summer reading list includes vital film criticism and new titles on Josephine Baker, Douglas Fairbanks, and more.

Apr 21, 2022 — In 1948, leftist filmmaker Leo Hurwitz directed a documentary whose title summed up the uncertainty of its moment: for America’s antifascists, the end of the Second World War was a Strange Victory indeed. Using newsreels from the war’s front lines,...

Aug 17, 2021 — Songbook It will always figure for me as an interval of eerily suspended time: not only a formative moviegoing experience but a jolt of awareness when the line between screen and life dissolved. In a dimly lit Tokyo cabaret the...

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

Jun 17, 2021 — The first real lesbian kiss in a film is an honor that rightfully belongs to Mädchen in Uniform. It’s true that a year earlier, in 1930, Marlene Dietrich played a tux-clad chanteuse who snogs a woman in a nightclub audience...