The Mop

May 24, 2004 — By piling on naturalistic details to keep the heat constantly in our minds, Akira Kurosawa creates a visual and behavioral excess that highlights the fixation of his hero on retrieving his stolen gun.

Sep 28, 2021 — Melvin Van Peebles takes aim at Hollywood’s way of representing race in this blistering satire about a white man who wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned Black overnight.

Jun 21, 2017 — Billing itself as “the world's longest continually-running film festival,” the Edinburgh International Film Festival opens its 71st edition today with Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country, one of five films Alistair Harkness recommends from the lineup in the Scotsman: “Already described...

Aug 26, 2025 — Alice Wu’s feature debut is a romantic comedy in which the most compelling relationship is the one between a young queer Chinese American woman and her long-widowed mother.

Feb 22, 2021 — Labor films are not where one typically goes when seeking love and grace. They are more often concerned with bodies subjected to torsion and the furrowed brow of someone who knows the cupboards are growing bare. Then there are the...

Feb 2, 2004 — A story about defeat and failure, Robert Bresson’s masterpiece is a milestone in the slow process of the liberation of postwar French cinema

Mar 10, 2003 — Vilgot Sjöman’s cultural-sexual sensation sparked much critical and popular mayhem, only to be consigned to nearly instantaneous oblivion.

Oct 18, 2016 — Guillermo del Toro’s anti–Wizard of Oz refracts the surreal traumas of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of a young girl.

Jan 8, 2019 — “Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated” is how Abbas Kiarostami once described his late turn toward minimalism. While the Iranian director was known for the intricate, metatextual playfulness of his work, he also spent much of his career...

Jul 20, 2018 — American audiences weren’t ready for Barbara Loden’s Wanda when it premiered in 1970. A stark portrait of a working-class woman (played with raw conviction by Loden herself) who breaks free of a miserable marriage, only to find herself on the...