They All Laughed

Jun 29, 2016 — In this essay, first published in Grand Street in 1994, Dr. Strangelove coscreenwriter Terry Southern offers a lively behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production.

May 28, 2019 — Songbook Some songs are so beautiful that it takes six or seven or fifty listens before you really hear the words. High on the list of the greatest American songwriters, Jerome Kern crafted many such melodies: perfect enough to momentarily...

Apr 22, 2022 — Over my forty-plus years at Janus and Criterion, few films have meant more to me than For All Mankind, because of my lifelong passion for space travel. I remember being a second-semester freshman and registering for Astronomy 101. It was...

Dec 30, 2019 — We asked some of our friends if they had underappreciated films from the past decade that they wanted to champion. Here’s what they chose.

May 24, 2016 — In The Player, Robert Altman’s early nineties comeback film, the director brilliantly skewers Hollywood—getting all the details right, as only he could—while constructing his own kind of Hollywood Movie.

Sep 26, 2011 — No preconceptions. No rehearsals. No rules. Assayas's on-the-fly bio is exhilaratingly all over the map.

Mar 3, 2025 — His range was astounding, and yet every performance was immediately recognizable as uniquely his.

Jun 14, 2024 — Featured this week are a breakthrough lesbian comedy, a Native American road movie, and a portrait of a Palestinian family.

Mar 5, 2024 — Friends and admirers pay tribute to his rigorous scholarship, his boundless enthusiasm, and his warm generosity.

Oct 17, 2023 — I. “Morbid Cinema” On October 10, 1962, there appeared a brief paragraph from the Associated Press: “Tod Browning, eighty-two, who directed scores of movies between 1917 and 1939, is dead. He succumbed Saturday after an illness, and no funeral plans...