The Brute

Nov 18, 2025 — This tale of paranoia and romantic jealousy slyly combines the conventions of popular Mexican filmmaking with the surrealist sensibility that made its director, Luis Buñuel, a legendary figure in his native Spain.

Jul 23, 2017 — “Exploding across the stressed out summer of 2017 like a powder keg thrown into a room that’s already on fire, Kathryn Bigelow’s hectic but harrowing docudrama account of the 1967 Detroit riots is inevitably as concerned with the persistence of...

Jan 3, 2025 — We spent the holidays reading about Claude Sautet, Pascal Plante, and Christian Marclay.

Dec 21, 2020 — This month we’re reading David Bordwell on the Massive Auteur Monograph, Rachel Kushner on Marguerite Duras, and Adam Gopnik on early animation.

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

Sep 8, 2021 — One of the best-reviewed films in Venice now heads to Toronto, New York, and London.

Oct 27, 2017 — In the wake of Christopher Nolan’s war epic Dunkirk, one of the most widely celebrated and commercially successful films of the summer, we’re revisiting the filmmaker’s no-less-inventive low-budget beginnings in this week’s Short + Feature, now streaming on the Criterion...

Jun 5, 2017 — Known for playing sexy noir toughs, Ralph Meeker underwent a startling transformation as the anguished, slovenly male lead in Jack Garfein’s psychological drama.

Aug 19, 2025 — In his fifth and sixth feature films, Edward Yang sought to uncover what was hidden in Taipei society, often in plain sight, looking past the city’s shiny skyline to the fault lines beneath the surface.

Feb 19, 2025 — Gus Van Sant’s lyrical exploration of addiction and faith—adapted from an autobiographical novel by James Fogle—influenced cinematic drug depictions throughout the nineties and helped to initiate a wave of American independent filmmaking.