Down by Law

Jun 21, 1994 — From the opening credits of Spike Lee’s seminal film, She’s Gotta Have It, viewers in 1986 were able to recognize the presence of an extraordinary talent. For it was Lee, a graduate of the New York University’s Tisch School of...

Feb 17, 2010 — The organizers of All Tomorrow Parties in New York have tapped Jim Jarmusch to be a guest curator at this year’s event. The independent music festival (which for the last couple of years has featured a venue for screenings of...

Nov 29, 2017 — Our popular Q&A series with director Jim Jarmusch is back!

Jul 9, 2021 — A raucous, fast-talking diva, the actor had a remarkable ability to convey both glamour and silliness, a gift that made her the queen of screwball comedy before her untimely death in 1942.

Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.

Jan 27, 2026 — Unencumbered by the white gaze, Reginald Hudlin’s groundbreaking feature-film debut is a celebration of a Black community in all its diversity, featuring fully realized characters who exist not as spectacle but as reality.

Mar 25, 2024 — What makes a “bad” movie anyway? By surveying the bombs, disasters, and secret masterpieces (dis)honored at the Golden Raspberry Awards, we can learn much about American cinema’s prevailing standards of taste.

Jan 28, 1991 — The following review, one of the most renowned in the history of film criticism, appeared in The New Yorker magazine on October 28, 1972. It is reprinted with the permission of the author, Pauline Kael. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in...

Nov 4, 2025 — The director of La commune and The War Game shook up viewers with dramatizations historical conflicts and imminent futures.

Jul 2, 2024 — Self-destruction is not only an aesthetic but its own subject matter in Sam Peckinpah’s deeply elegiac western, a towering masterpiece that examines American power and greed.