Out West

Apr 1, 2020 — Are Snakes Necessary?, an erotically charged tale of revenge and political intrigue, naturally features a nod to Hitchcock.

Jan 21, 2020 — The Mankiewicz brothers, Jonas Mekas, Werner Herzog, Sidney Lumet, and Ja’Tovia Gary all figure in this month’s roundup.

Mar 7, 2019 — The art of Orson Welles and David Lynch, the marriage of Fay Wray and Robert Riskin, and the criticism of Adrian Martin and David Thomson are among the subjects in this month’s round.

Oct 23, 2018 — Jon S. Baird and his cast offer a winning tribute to Laurel and Hardy.

May 24, 2018 — The late novelist’s work has proven to be an all but insurmountable challenge to screenwriters—but there’s hope.

Sep 6, 2017 — When Dee Rees’s Mudbound premiered at Sundance, I gathered a first round of reviews, beginning with Justin Chang’s for the Los Angeles Times: “Adapted from Hillary Jordan’s novel, Mudbound sketches a vivid, dirt-under-the-nails panorama of 1940s Mississippi farm country, centered...

Jul 21, 2017 — A landmark of mainstream queer cinema, Donna Deitch’s 1986 feature debut returns to theaters in a new restoration.

Dec 6, 2017 — “There’s topical, there’s timely, and then there’s The Post, which feels less like a historical thriller set in 1971 than it does an exhilarating caricature of the year 2017,” begins David Ehrlich at IndieWire. “While Steven Spielberg’s latest film rivetingly...

Mar 24, 2018 — Just a day or two after Stephen Hawking left us on March 14, Isaac Butler called up Errol Morris for Slate to talk about A Brief History of Time (1991), the documentary that takes it title from Hawking’s surprise bestseller....

Jun 29, 2016 — In this essay, first published in Grand Street in 1994, Dr. Strangelove coscreenwriter Terry Southern offers a lively behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production.