The Dark Valley

Jul 27, 2022 — Beat the heat with our extensive survey of Chinese representation in American film as well as tributes to Yaphet Kotto, David Gulpilil, and Myrna Loy.

Jun 12, 2024 — This summer, we’re bringing back one of our favorite seasonal themes with a hard-boiled Neonoir collection. Plus: Pop Shakespeare, Times Square, and Columbia Screwball.

Aug 12, 2017 — At Shadowplay, David Cairns has posted David Melville Wingrove’s tribute to Conchita Montenegro, whose career in theater and film took her around the world from the late 1920s through the mid-40s. Her “triumphant final film” would be the 1944 Spanish...

Sep 24, 2024 — Emerging out of the mass death, cultural ferment, and semiotic tumult of the 1990s, this trio of deliriously profane films glares at American youth culture and gives zero shits if it looks back.

Jul 19, 2024 — We’re looking back to films by Pakula and Oshima, and from the 1990s, by Claire Denis and Richard Shepard.

Aug 20, 2018 — A survey of some of the most notable titles to have appeared over the summer.

Jul 19, 2010 — “Why do you want to dance?” “Why do you want to live?” A question followed by another question stands at the beating heart of The Red Shoes. It’s an entirely rhetorical exchange, but it underscores the power and the mystery...

Jul 31, 2017 — Broadway World has broken the sad and startling news that “playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director Sam Shepard has passed away. Shepard, who had been ill with ALS for some time, died peacefully on July 27 at his home in...

Jun 1, 2016 — With Wrong Move, Wim Wenders made “a movie about the impossibility of moviemaking, a road movie about the uselessness of travel, a literary film about the impossibility of communication.”

Sep 23, 2025 — A tale of animal survival in a world deserted by humanity, Gints Zilbalodis’s Oscar-winning triumph casts a hushed spell with its elemental storytelling, immersive visual style, and creaturely subjectivity.