Almost a Comedy

Apr 18, 2025 — When Mayor John Lindsay made it easier for filmmakers to shoot on location in New York City, he paved the way for a string of movies that captured the troubled metropolis in the late sixties and early seventies.

Jun 18, 2024 — We’re diving deeper this month into a new Elaine May biography and memoirs from Susan Seidelman and Griffin Dunne.

Dec 22, 2023 — An appreciation of Raúl Ruiz, a chat with Maggie Renzi and John Sayles, and a holiday lightning round.

Oct 27, 2022 — To capture the spirit of Frank Capra’s dark screwball classic, Criterion enlisted a longtime collaborator to create an image that combines the influences of Old Hollywood illustrator Jacques Kapralik and legendary pen-and-ink artist Edward Gorey.

May 31, 2022 — Billy Wilder’s classic film noir is a powerful meditation on masculinity, desire, and the fantasies of white America.

May 5, 2022 — Has Asian American cinematic representation really reached unprecedented heights, as almost all recent film coverage on the subject claims? In the past two years, critics’ polls, New York Times features, and Golden Globes scandals have marked the newfound success of...

Apr 6, 2022 — A playfully philosophical drama, My American Uncle has been largely forgotten, yet it is the most down-to-earth of the French master’s exhilarating engagements with modernist aesthetics.

Jan 11, 2022 — A searing melodrama that lays bare the trauma wrought by white supremacy and privilege, Thomas Vinterberg’s second feature kick-started the Dogme 95 movement.

Oct 30, 2020 — In his tension-filled, black-comic Oscar winner, Bong Joon Ho masterfully mixes tones and subverts genres in order to shine a harsh light on the mechanisms that maintain class inequality.

Jun 18, 2020 — When Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader made its theatrical premiere in July 2000, it was entering a queer political landscape vastly different from the one we live in today. Over the last two decades, we’ve witnessed the rise of LGBTQ...