The Half of It

Jul 16, 2018 — In this essay originally published in the New Yorker, Roger Angell hails Ron Shelton’s comic ode to baseball as one of the few movies to capture the essence of the sport.

May 29, 2018 — John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy is a milestone along several different paths of movie history, all of which converged at the majestically seedy crossroads of Times Square in the spring of 1968.

May 10, 2018 — The followup to Mrs. Fang is an oral history of China’s “Anti-Rightist Campaign” in the late 1950s.

Nov 7, 2017 — A haughty socialite is torn between the affections of three men in George Cukor’s blissful comedy of manners.

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.

Apr 27, 2017 — 1. As I began work on The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew and Associates, I knew that 1960’s Primary was really the birth of what we think of as the modern documentary: observational photography based on access to an interesting subject, presenting...

Apr 10, 2017 — Critic Peter Cowie pays tribute to a quintessentially English master, whose prolific career stretches back to the silent era.

Jul 21, 2016 — Interweaving wartime footage with haunting images of abandoned concentration camps, Alain Resnais’s breakthrough was one of the first films to confront the ravages of the Holocaust.

Mar 21, 2016 — Edward Yang’s masterful 1991 adolescent epic telegraphs the tensions and turbulence of 1960s Taiwan, when youth pop culture and teen street gangs became a major societal force.

Jan 21, 2015 — Money can’t buy love and happiness in Preston Sturges’s classic comedy—or can it?