Let It Be

Apr 13, 2023 — Combining elements of soft-core porn and film noir, one of the most popular Hollywood genres of the 1980s and ’90s captured the fraught aspirationalism and sexual mores of the era.

Feb 23, 2023 — Notes on new features from Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Margarethe von Trotta, and Volker Koepp.

Feb 14, 2023 — This month’s roundup opens with an appreciation of Preston Sturges and wraps with a book launch serving donuts and damn fine coffee.

Feb 9, 2023 — New York’s Metrograph presents a series of films Rainer has called “autobiographical fictions, untrue confessions.”

Sep 30, 2022 — We’re reading interviews with Garret Bradley and Don Hertzfeldt and a marvelous account of the making of Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Sep 28, 2022 — Sarah Maldoror’s only completed narrative feature tracks the Angolan struggle for independence from Portugal and reckons with the interlocking systems of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

Aug 26, 2022 — In a pivotal early scene in this baseball classic, director Ron Shelton mischievously uses two contrasting rock tunes to comment on disparate versions of masculinity.

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.

Jul 15, 2022 — This week we head back to 1981 with Reverse Shot, to the 1970s with Straub-Huillet, and to the 1960s with Marco Bellocchio.

Jul 15, 2022 — In her last significant film role, the art-house icon reveals an emotional vulnerability previously hidden by her ethereal persona.