Solo

Jan 11, 1999 — David Lean followed his prodigious adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations with this brilliant crystallization of Dickens’ Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. It deploys the cinema’s special powers of dash and immediacy to convey all the venturesomeness and...

Nov 13, 1991 — Richard Lester’s Help! was the first of a new kind of rock-and-roll movie which altered the shape, face, and form of rock music. Before Help!, most of the rock-and-roll genre movies were simple, self contained films conceived in the narrowest...

Mar 12, 1990 — This Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film is a classic example of how music and dance can be used to tell a story, express emotions, richly explore human relationships, subvert logic, and send us singing and skipping into the street.

Dec 11, 1989 — Previous rock-and-roll movies had been little more than showcases for the latest music, aimed at exploiting the youth market, cheaply made and melodramatic—then along came one of the most finely crafted films ever made about rock-and-roll.

Oct 12, 1987 — Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling Cinemascope epic is set squarely within the traditions of the Japanese film genre known as the “Chambara.”

Apr 24, 2019 — American cinema has lost one of its most visionary artists.

Fernanda Solórzano is the chief film critic for Letras libres. She has also written for many Mexican print outlets, as well as Cahiers du cinéma, Caimán cuadernos de cine, and Sight and Sound, among other publications. She is the author...

Nov 18, 2025 — This tale of paranoia and romantic jealousy slyly combines the conventions of popular Mexican filmmaking with the surrealist sensibility that made its director, Luis Buñuel, a legendary figure in his native Spain.

Mar 14, 2017 — Religious fanaticism and anti-Communist hysteria give way to mass violence in this groundbreaking work of Mexican political cinema.

Mar 14, 2025 — Spend the weekend with Buñuel, Pasolini, Sarah Maldoror, Todd Solondz, and Pedro Almodóvar.