Best of the Best

Aug 28, 1995 — Three Cases of Murder is of most interest to American audiences for Orson Welles’s flamboyant and bravura performance as Lord Mountdrago. However, it’s equally important as a showcase for Wendy Toye, one of Britain’s first female directors, and star Alan...

Apr 10, 2026 — Jia Zhang-Ke and Steven Soderbergh experiment with AI, plus: Jim Jarmusch, Tina Aumont, and Elvira Notari.

Jan 9, 2026 — This week: Conversations with Lav Diaz, Mira Nair, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Jul 21, 2025 — Summer offers new biographies and memoirs, expansively big ideas, and more than a few curious fictions.

Mar 3, 2025 — Sean Baker’s eighth feature wins five top Academy Awards.

Apr 6, 2022 — A playfully philosophical drama, My American Uncle has been largely forgotten, yet it is the most down-to-earth of the French master’s exhilarating engagements with modernist aesthetics.

Feb 9, 2022 — The Learning Tree may have been Gordon Parks’s first feature film as a director, but by the time filming began in the fall of 1968, Parks already had almost three decades of experience behind a camera. In 1940, the self-taught...

Nov 15, 2021 — Paul Newman’s forthcoming memoir, Bill Gunn’s 1981 novel, and Melissa Anderson’s Inland Empire are among this month’s notable titles.

May 25, 2021 — In Edmund Goulding’s gritty cult classic, Tyrone Power casts off his matinee-idol image to play a conniving carnival barker on the flipside of the American dream.

May 5, 2021 — Deep Dives THE LIFE OF THE LANDIS PERPETUATEDIN RIGHTEOUSNESS one of the protest signs depicted (poetically, upside down) in The Sand Island Story Victoria Keith was a high school teacher, in 1976, when she heard about the pending eviction of two farming communities on Oahu’s East Shore....