Five Came Back

Oct 8, 2025 — We remember an artist, teacher, and filmmaker who unleashed realms of depth from two-dimensional images.

Feb 14, 2025 — The director of Down with Love talks about his favorite romantic comedies set in the great metropolis and looks back on the making of his own foray into the genre.

May 20, 2024 — From documentaries and stop-motion animation to multimedia projects, the richly varied work of this veteran director is a testament to her innovative spirit and her commitment to the everyday beauty of African American experiences.

Aug 11, 2023 — Great as they are, there was a lot more to Hurricane Billy than The French Connection and The Exorcist.

Sep 28, 2022 — A long-obscure landmark of the Iranian New Wave, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s daringly ambiguous portrait of feudalism’s demise mirrors the revolutionary times in which it was made.

Sep 30, 2020 — Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 Pixote (1980), subtitled A lei do mais fraco (The Law of the Weakest), a hard-hitting tale of urban street children and their daily battle for survival in brutal conditions, was the Argentine-born Brazilian...

Feb 25, 2020 — In these times of Trumpidation, thirty years after its auspicious release, Paris Is Burning seems even more relevant than it did in early 1991, when I wrote the following for Black Film Review about Jennie Livingston’s phenomenal documentary on New...

Nov 26, 2019 — In a key scene of the beloved Bette Davis film Now, Voyager (1942), the heroine goes to dinner on a cruise ship wearing a cloak decorated with fritillaries. A fritillary is a spangled butterfly, and the scene signals that Charlotte...

May 22, 2019 — Cannes 2019 While politics has never been a stranger to the Cannes Film Festival lineup, this year’s offerings have proven to be even more charged than usual. And one of the more lively and notable premieres on the Croisette so...

Apr 19, 2019 — In the spotlight this week: A new resource on avant-garde cinema, Kent Jones on Francis Ford Coppola, Darren Hughes on Claire Denis, and more.