America

Two unflinching reports from working-class America; a Brooklyn-set Dostoevskian family tragedy and gangster drama; an existential crime thriller from a French-cinema legend; a prescient commentary on self-help culture; and five documentaries that wage war against the conformism of modern Japanese...

An X-ray of corporate America; an existential noir thriller; four pre-Code movie musicals; a gonzo revenge thriller; a psychologically complex western; a nearly wordless comedic achievement; and a benchmark of independent cinema.

The award-winning writer, director, producer, and critic shouts out a Marlon Riggs retrospective he programmed in Brazil, recalls watching Albert Brooks’s Lost in America on VHS in the eighties, and shares how Agnès Varda became an “imaginary friend” to him...

Nov 26, 2024 — In this tragicomic road movie about a Bible-selling con man and his precocious young charge, Peter Bogdanovich brings Depression-era America to vivid life without sentimentality or nostalgia.

May 16, 2023 — Inspired by golden-age monster movies and the story of a real-life mass murderer, Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature evokes the psychic dread of America in the 1960s, a decade defined by long-distance and increasingly high-profile gun violence.

Aug 17, 2022 — The music of the legendary, multiple-Oscar-winning composer brought the freedom and anxiety of postwar America to life.

Apr 4, 2022 — Nicholas Ray’s melodrama is both a critique of 1950s America and a straight-up horror movie.

Feb 19, 2021 — This week’s round takes us from Italy in the 1950s and ’60s to America in the ’70s and Hong Kong in the ’90s.

Jul 31, 2018 — The award-winning director of The Rider explores the deep respect for nature and subjective human experience in Terrence Malick’s masterful vision of early seventeenth-century America.

Jun 6, 2017 — Combining sardonic humor with poignant characterizations, this cult comedy explores the discontents of two high-school graduates adrift in strip-mall America.