The Crook

Jan 31, 2019 — Trailblazer Elaine May altered the landscape of comedy and screenwriting, and in the three films she directed in the 1970s—A New Leaf (1971) , The Heartbreak Kid (1972), and Mikey and Nicky (1976)—she brought a fresh, often uncomfortable perspective to the portrayal of...

Apr 17, 2018 — The seventeenth Tribeca Film Festival opens tonight in New York with Love, Gilda, Lisa D’Apolito’s portrait of beloved comic actress Gilda Radner, and screens around one hundred more features before wrapping on April 29. Throughout the festival’s run, I’ll be...

Apr 15, 2018 — La Semaine de la Critique, or Critics’ Week, has announced the lineup for its fifty-seventh edition, running from May 9 through 17 in Cannes. The opening film will be Paul Dano’s Wildlife, and I gathered a first round of reviews...

Mar 21, 2019 — “The world is full of skeptics,” Detour’s Al Roberts struggles to explain, in voice-over, while on-screen we’re pondering Vera’s dead body. “I know. I’m one myself . . .”Even now, closing in on seventy-five years after the Producers Releasing Corporation...

Nov 25, 2016 — In his deeply personal third feature, Noah Baumbach charts a family’s dissolution against the backdrop of 1980s literary Brooklyn.

Apr 7, 2026 — The third edition opens with Maddie’s Secret and features Chronovisor, After Dreaming, and Blue Heron.

Jun 17, 2025 — Authors address overt and covert queer cinema, the avant-garde, and AI; plus notes on new collections and entire filmographies.

Jun 12, 2025 — The acclaimed crime writer joins a producer of the 1999 adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley to discuss the cinematic incarnations of Patricia Highsmith’s shape-shifting, quintessentially American antihero.

Dec 20, 2024 — Along with conversations with Jem Cohen and Johnnie To, the week brings fresh angles on the year that was.

Sep 25, 2024 — At a time when women were understood to be the primary audience for movies, Hollywood studios built vehicles for actresses that doubled as showcases for the industry’s many brilliant female screenwriters.