May 20, 2009 — The title alone screams incongruity. Shohei Imamura’s 1961 black-and-white caper movie Pigs and Battleships bursts with the confusion and exuberance of a cross-cultural encounter. In its lively portrayal of enthusiastic Japanese locals welcoming the U.S. Navy on R&R to the...

Sep 26, 2025 — One of the most provocative subgenres of 1970s exploitation cinema, nunsploitation explores the collision of sex and religious dogma through stories of desperately horny women of the cloth.

Nov 13, 2024 — Spend the holiday season with the Pope of Trash, the Master of Suspense, MTV Productions’s turn-of-the-century thrills, and Columbia Pictures’s pre-Code button-pushers.

Dec 8, 2023 — Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage), the jittery protagonist of Ridley Scott’s 2003 crime comedy Matchstick Men, doesn’t like to think of himself as a common crook. “I’m a con artist,” he insists, and—in a frenzy of self-justification—further explains: “They give me...

Feb 21, 2023 — On the verge of implosion, the band rages through a performance of their song “Circle Sky” in a psychedelic, politically trenchant sequence from director Bob Rafelson’s debut feature.

Dec 1, 2021 — Celebrate the holidays with our 21-film Alfred Hitchcock retrospective and a series dedicated to collaborations between female directors and cinematographers.

Jan 29, 2021 — Dark Passages A nightclub floor show with dancers kicking and tapping under a scrim of cigarette smoke and the murmuration of an indifferent crowd. Couples listlessly swaying in a second-floor ballroom, the men clutching rolls of tickets and the ladies...

Nov 5, 2020 — Performances Whenever I think of the iconic Bengali actor Supriya Choudhury, the first thing I recall is not her face—with its high cheekbones and large, kohl-rimmed eyes that often drew comparisons to Sophia Loren’s—but her voice, disembodied, tearing through the...

Jun 22, 2020 — Songbook At first it’s just one of many Fellini-esque dances: a band switches to an upbeat tune, Nino Rota’s “Caracalla’s (La Bersagliera),” and a previously dour party becomes an impromptu circle of ecstatic movement. Though overshadowed in La dolce vita...

Apr 16, 2020 — Performances If Richard Milhous Nixon, the thirty-sixth president, continues to inspire a morbid fascination in some of us, the reasons for this extend beyond the obviously exceptional aspects of his career—his reelection in 1972, one of the largest landslide victories...