Work in Progress

Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?

May 22, 2006 — Luis Buñuel’s merciless satire concerns the smallness of our vision of progress and our narrow attempts to achieve it through rational or moralistic planning.

Sep 13, 2004 — About a year and a half ago, a friend and I found ourselves exiled to a cold Midwestern city, where we spent most of our time missing the lazy Texas college town that shaped our idea of the good life....

May 26, 2026 — Of all the performing arts, stand-up comedy may be the most ephemeral, even more so if the humor is considered dangerous or taboo. Stand-up relies on the charged dynamic between a comedian and an audience, with both sides often bringing...

Apr 22, 2024 — Fiercely committed to the possibilities of political art, the trailblazing director talks about how her intersectional understanding of feminism imbues her films, three of which are now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Jan 24, 2023 — Filled with evocative images and guided by the unique aesthetic sensibility of the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s film is an exploration of the power of grief that is paradoxically uplifting.

Aug 23, 2022 — Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, a western depicting Black cowboy heroes, allowed two of the industry’s most significant Black stars to reorient themselves as artists.

Sep 28, 2021 — Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films Come on now, honey sugarYou know your baby loveYou know just the other dayI was gonna take you to go see a movieSweet Sweetback . . . Stevie Wonder, “Sweet Little Girl,” 1972 We went...

May 11, 2021 — Dorothy Arzner’s deeply cynical portrait of marriage exemplifies the director’s ambivalence toward the norms dictating female behavior, wielding ironic detachment to mask one woman’s simmering inner turmoil.

Mar 5, 2021 — This week offers a new magazine, conversations with Guy Maddin and the great women filmmakers of the 1970s, and a new restoration of a Hong Kong classic.