A Man of His Time

May 27, 2025 — A landmark of independent cinema, Charles Burnett’s debut feature captures daily life in Watts, Los Angeles, with a depth and precision that evokes the history of Black American music.

Aug 28, 2025 — Made for public television, this moving vérité documentary about three terminally ill cancer patients is one of the purest expressions of the director’s career-long preoccupation with human fragility.

Jun 14, 2023 — In her deeply empathetic documentaries, the British filmmaker illuminates the lives of ordinary people who have quietly created new identities and possibilities for themselves.

Nov 16, 2021 — Starting with his first movie, in 1949, the Cantonese folk hero became a pop-culture phenomenon whose personality evolved to suit the times.

Jan 6, 2021 — “Of the various insects that like to make their home in our houses, certainly the most interesting, for her beautiful shape, her curious manners, and her wonderful nest, is a certain Wasp called the Pelopaeus. She is very little known,...

Oct 24, 2019 — D irector Ishiro Honda gathered his crew and gave them an ultimatum. He was about to put his career at risk, and he would only work with those who approached his current project—a movie about a radiation-spewing prehistoric reptile that...

Feb 19, 2018 — Jonathan Demme put an uncompromisingly feminist spin on the law-enforcement procedural with this wildly successful, Oscar-winning drama.

Sep 18, 2012 — Marcel Carné’s theatrical spectacle set in early nineteenth-century Paris is an operatic work about passion and artifice.

Jul 19, 2012 — I want to start with my favorite story about Carole Lombard. She began her career in Hollywood in her teens and, as we know, was very attractive. She found herself hounded by the wolves of Tinseltown but came up with...

Feb 2, 2011 — This essay first appeared in the winter 2010 issue of Brick, a literary journal based in Toronto. It is posted here by permission of the author. Michelangelo said he could sense the figure in the uncut stone; his job was...