First Blood

Jul 2, 2024 — Self-destruction is not only an aesthetic but its own subject matter in Sam Peckinpah’s deeply elegiac western, a towering masterpiece that examines American power and greed.

Jun 7, 2024 — Standouts this week include conversations with Bridgett M. Davis and Nan Goldin and essays on Nobuhiko Obayashi and Paul Schrader.

May 28, 2024 — With just a few exceptions, critics are generally pleased with this year’s awards.

Apr 29, 2024 — From After Hours to Mikey and Nicky to Collateral, movies centered on the twists and turns of a single night give filmmakers the chance to boldly experiment with cinematic time and space.

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.

Mar 27, 2024 — The director of the films that launched the Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub series made three virtuosic, melancholic dramas in the early 1960s.

Mar 8, 2024 — This week calls for notes on some of the best writing on each of the ten nominees for Best Picture.

Oct 17, 2023 — I. “Morbid Cinema” On October 10, 1962, there appeared a brief paragraph from the Associated Press: “Tod Browning, eighty-two, who directed scores of movies between 1917 and 1939, is dead. He succumbed Saturday after an illness, and no funeral plans...

Oct 12, 2023 — The director completes her “trilogy on Italian identity” by offering an outsider’s point of view.

Sep 25, 2023 — This month brings collections on Straub-Huillet and Whit Stillman, an Anna May Wong biography, and a novel starring Marilyn Monroe.