Down by Law

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 26, 2022 — Deep Dives Every elliptical pleasure of Michael Laughlin’s Strange Behavior (a.k.a. Dead Kids, 1981)—the flattened post–Twilight Zone affect, the tableaux evoking Technicolor footage faded like old Polaroids, a host of cross-pollinated genre kinks—suggests outmoded code that’s been surreptitiously updated. Embracing...

Aug 30, 2022 — Next month, the Criterion Channel celebrates the films of trailblazing cinematographer James Wong Howe, European acting icon Romy Schneider, and Spanish provocateur Carlos Saura.

Jul 29, 2022 — We head back to the 1940s in Los Angeles, the 1960s in New York and Paris, and to every summer you remember.

Jul 26, 2022 — The festival selects urgent documentaries, starry portraits, and family dramas.

Jul 20, 2022 — A brutal critique of the American dream, Carl Franklin’s 1995 thriller explicitly confronts the racialized implications of classic film noir.

Mar 25, 2022 — With its rambling Victorian mansions and seedy charms, the once-exclusive area of downtown Los Angeles was film noir’s favorite neighborhood.

Mar 1, 2022 — The first film I saw at last year’s Morelia International Film Festival opens on the image of a freshly dug grave. Shovelfuls of earth fall into the open pit as two doctors stand above it, lamenting the loss of yet...

Feb 23, 2022 — In the 1961 screen adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play, the actor radiantly embodies the conflicting impulses that define the character of Beneatha Younger—a modern woman filled with hope and longing.

Jul 6, 2021 — Howard Hawks’s madcap battle of the sexes is a reminder of how necessary and sneakily profound silliness can be.