The First Year

May 13, 2022 — The director of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair reflects on the transformative power of a Sonic Youth needle drop in Olivier Assayas’s 1996 film.

Apr 21, 2022 — In 1948, leftist filmmaker Leo Hurwitz directed a documentary whose title summed up the uncertainty of its moment: for America’s antifascists, the end of the Second World War was a Strange Victory indeed. Using newsreels from the war’s front lines,...

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.

Nov 18, 2021 — Brief notes on films arriving from Mike Mills, Tatiana Huezo, Jane Campion, Robert Greene, and Radu Jude.

Nov 16, 2021 — Tsui Hark’s epic martial-arts saga revolutionized Hong Kong cinema by presenting a complex portrait of modern Chinese history and setting a gold standard in action choreography.

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.

Nov 3, 2021 — 1. Jack Arnold was a prolific genre director over the course of his many years as a filmmaker. He started as a cinematographer in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, and after the end of the war started...

Oct 22, 2021 — Deep Dives People of color have often been erased from the history of queer life, but against the odds they have managed to leave behind important documents of their communities’ survival, including underappreciated films that remain to be discovered by...

Oct 13, 2021 — When I was growing up in the 1970s, the Black Panther Party’s trademark Afros and black leather jackets were a familiar sight. But it wasn’t until I began studying the Black Panthers in my late teens that I became familiar with...

Oct 1, 2021 — Deep Dives Because he’s Orson Welles, even during a less-bankable stretch of his career, he received top billing in Three Cases of Murder. Welles was also pictured most prominently on all the promotional materials for this little-known 1955 British anthology...