Fred Kaplan is the War Stories columnist for Slate and the author of seven books, including The Insurgents (a Pulitzer Prize finalist for general nonfiction) and A Capital Calamity, a satirical novel.

Aug 8, 2021 — This month on the Channel, dive into the films of John Huston, Jean Harlow, Josephine Baker, and other cinematic icons.

May 4, 2020 — “You’ve never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you, Diz?”Jean Arthur asks this poetic, expressively peculiar question of Thomas Mitchell in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and we understand her yearning for truth...

May 29, 2019 — In Anna Biller’s vibrantly colored fantasias, there’s not a glimmer of a sequin that hasn’t been envisioned by the artist herself. A writer, director, actor, producer, editor, composer, costume and production designer, and set decorator, she’s a one-woman studio, building...

Aug 23, 2018 — The director of Computer Chess and Support the Girls finds in John Cassavetes a surrealist whose weirdest set pieces could make David Lynch blush.

Oct 2, 2015 — We were delighted when Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and his wife, the actress Ariane Labed, dropped by for lunch in the Criterion kitchen on Monday.

Jan 22, 2026 — This visually stunning masterpiece from Kazakh New Wave iconoclast Ardak Amirkulov is one of the few films that looks evil in the eye without flinching.

May 14, 2025 — The festival presents new restorations of films by Chantal Akerman, Charles Burnett, John Ford, and James Ivory.

Mar 31, 2025 — The first five days of New Directors/New Films, the showcase of new talent copresented by FLC and MoMA, are packed.

Jan 14, 2025 — There’s a Delphine Seyrig retrospective on in New York and another will open at the Harvard Film Archive on Friday.