The Stranger

Feb 9, 2024 — We’re taking Black History Month viewing recommendations, listening to Peter Bogdanovich’s podcast, and reading about London critics’ favorites.

Dec 18, 2023 — As we scan the latest lists, polls, and awards, it seems that many critical favorites are emerging in pairs.

Dec 21, 2020 — This month we’re reading David Bordwell on the Massive Auteur Monograph, Rachel Kushner on Marguerite Duras, and Adam Gopnik on early animation.

Jan 24, 2018 — One of the most memorable sequences in the silent classic People on Sunday explores the experience of being photographed and the tension between still and moving images.

Oct 18, 2016 — Guillermo del Toro’s anti–Wizard of Oz refracts the surreal traumas of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of a young girl.

Sep 27, 2016 — This monumental meditation on the Ten Commandments captures the spiritual undercurrents of life in late-Communist Poland.

Nov 23, 1999 — The occasion of the 100th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s birth rewards us with a new release of one of his greatest films, The 39 Steps (1935). This DVD provides a newly restored transfer, new critical audio commentary on the film,...

May 24, 1999 — Before The Red Shoes, there were films with dance numbers. After it, there was a new medium which combined dance, design, and music in a dreamlike spectacle. Hollywood musicals were quick to pay tribute—An American in Paris was the most...

Jan 11, 2017 — A love story of startling formal and psychological complexity, Abbas Kiarostami’s 2010 Certified Copy—the late master’s first dramatic feature made outside his native Iran—stars Juliette Binoche and English opera singer William Shimell as an antique dealer and a writer, who...

May 28, 2024 — In Karyn Kusama’s award-winning feature debut, Michelle Rodriguez delivers a smoldering performance as a young woman who finds in boxing a container for her grief, loss, and rage.