The Small Back Room

Sep 25, 2025 — To celebrate Robert Altman’s centennial, we invited five writers—Howard Hampton, Bruce LaBruce, Violet Lucca, Christina Newland, and Carlos Valladares—to each explore a favorite lesser-known gem from the great director’s filmography.

Jul 22, 2025 — In his achingly beautiful debut feature, Kenneth Lonergan captures the dynamics of a sibling relationship shaped by grief, revealing its complexities with narrative economy and deep emotion.

Mar 25, 2025 — Set in a grimy, unglamorous version of Los Angeles, Arthur Penn’s Watergate-era neonoir tells the story of an honorable private eye acutely conscious of living in an era that is the mere shadow of a nobler past.

Jan 29, 2024 — Jurors, audiences, and critics seem to agree that 2024 is off to a promising start.

Jan 26, 2023 — This great director from the golden age of Mexican cinema drew upon a wide range of styles to explore the conflict between tradition and modernity.

Oct 12, 2021 — In Raoul Walsh’s elegy for the Depression-era archetype of the noble outlaw, Humphrey Bogart plays an old-fashioned desperado who has outlived his time.

Sep 14, 2021 — A staple of 1980s British cinema, Neil Jordan’s crime drama considers the slippery characters that inhabit the London underworld.

Sep 3, 2021 — In the thirty-fifth edition of the Italian festival dedicated to restored films, an eclectic lineup underscores the transportive physicality of cinema after a long year stuck at home.

Aug 10, 2021 — Hirokazu Kore-eda’s international breakthrough is a bittersweet meditation on mortality, memory, and the movies.

May 18, 2021 — Here’s an update on what Bong Joon Ho, Margarethe von Trotta, David Cronenberg, Alice Rohrwacher, and Wes Anderson are up to.