All Things Fair

Aug 27, 2013 — Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II–era high-wire act is a profound take on the absurdity cruelty of civilization and a perfect black comedy to boot.

Nov 1, 2023 — Chloe Domont is a Los Angeles–based writer and director whose feature directorial debut, Fair Play, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by Netflix. Her short films, Haze and All Good Things, have been included in the official...

Feb 24, 2026 — For this existential noir, Joel and Ethan Coen drew inspiration from crime-fiction master James M. Cain’s lean, hard-boiled style and interest in the quotidian world of work.

Nov 24, 2025 — This month brings new collections from Melissa Anderson and A. S. Hamrah and a whole shelf of lives lived with the movies.

Jun 18, 2024 — We’re diving deeper this month into a new Elaine May biography and memoirs from Susan Seidelman and Griffin Dunne.

Aug 14, 2019 — There is a scene in Henry King’s State Fair (1933) that ranks among the most poetic moments in all of 1930s American cinema. There is not much to it, just a family driving through the dusk in their rattling pickup...

Aug 1, 2023 — “Do you want me to turn them loose?” This is what cowboy Perce asks a sad-eyed Roslyn in John Huston’s elegiac The Misfits (1961), and that one question about untying the mustangs he and fellow wranglers Gay (Clark Gable) and...

Nov 25, 2020 — “Yes, life is a dream, but sometimes that dream is a fatal abyss.” Wanda in The White Sheik (1952) I have a vivid memory from the first film-studies class I enrolled in, a class on Italian neorealism, where the weekly...

Jul 28, 2020 — Having won the hearts of audiences and costars, one of the brightest lights of Hollywood’s golden age also scored a landmark victory in the courts.

Sep 21, 2017 — It’s #StephenKingDay. The author of fifty-four novels, most of them bestsellers, six works of nonfiction, including the widely revered memoir On Writing (2000), and nearly 200 short stories turns seventy today. “The ‘King of Horror’ has sold an estimated 350...