History of Love

David Kalat is a film historian who has been in love with the fantastique since his misspent childhood. He has written several books, including The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse and, most recently, Too Funny for Words: A Contrarian History...

Mar 24, 2026 — In this true-crime epic, Martin Scorsese combines his career-long exploration of amoral gangsterism with a sobering meditation on what it means to live on American soil.

Jan 29, 2026 — A resounding critical and popular success upon its release, Héctor Babenco’s adaptation of a literary masterpiece by Manuel Puig was an unprecedented cinematic fusion of a radical politics of sex with a sexual politics of revolution.

Oct 2, 2025 — In Wes Anderson’s romantic ode to journalism, the director grapples with the danger and horror inherent in any field of endeavor worth pursuing.

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.

Apr 25, 2023 — In his second Palme d’Or–winning film, Ruben Östlund uses familiar reality-television tropes to stage a deeply unnerving spectacle of obscene wealth and class outrage.

Aug 31, 2021 — Cary Joji Fukunaga’s devastating child-soldier movie unflinchingly captures the shock of war without forsaking the complexity of human experience.

Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda It’s the other famous shot in The Gleaners and I (2000) of Agnès Varda’s reaching hands. Not the one she said was taught around the world as the heart of her documentary-making, where, in...

Jul 24, 2018 — A feast of sumptuous color and cinematic imagination, Powell and Pressburger’s postwar masterpiece is also a powerful reckoning with recent history.

May 14, 2018 — In the singular world of Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, auteurist homage and social consciousness are joined by some of the most lovingly filmed dogs in contemporary cinema.