The Bad and the Beautiful

May 27, 2014 — Howard Hawks was both a skillful Hollywood craftsman and a deeply personal artist, and this western of uncommon wit and grandeur is among his greatest and quirkiest films.

Feb 14, 2002 — Robert Bresson’s second feature is fixed in history as one of the movies that heralded an austere, modernistic way of seeing and feeling.

May 29, 2019 — Once again, Lav Diaz and Takashi Miike did what they do; but the Fortnight also showcased a wide range of promising talent.

Jul 17, 2019 — In Spain, as Pedro Almodóvar was getting ready to leave home, no young man argued with his father about politics, no one wanted to discuss or refight the Civil War. Instead, the argument was about the length of your hair,...

Aug 29, 2023 — Exalting Black women’s self-invention with DIY effervescence, Drylongso (1998) is a gorgeously generous study of friendship, creativity, violence, and survival. The multidisciplinary artist Cauleen Smith developed the idea for the project from her habit of taking Polaroid photographs. Shot on...

Jan 3, 2025 — We spent the holidays reading about Claude Sautet, Pascal Plante, and Christian Marclay.

Mar 25, 2024 — What makes a “bad” movie anyway? By surveying the bombs, disasters, and secret masterpieces (dis)honored at the Golden Raspberry Awards, we can learn much about American cinema’s prevailing standards of taste.

Nov 22, 2023 — Quite an emotional range this week, from musicals and romantic comedies to the terror of nuclear war.

Jun 22, 2021 — This omnibus documentary captures the remarkable peculiarities of athletic striving in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

Dec 10, 2019 — Rock music, as director Wim Wenders once joked in an interview, offered to him and other Germans of his generation the “only alternative to Beethoven.” There is likely as much truth as hyper­­bole in the statement; considering the role that...