FEATURES
Black Panther and the Promise of Science Fiction
By Devika Girish
A studio-sized engagement with race under the sign of Afrofuturism, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther taps into a maligned genre’s superpowers, from high-gloss to lo-fi
Wong Kar Wai
By Olivier Assayas
The Hong Kong movie game-changer is poetically reappraised by the cutting-edge French auteur in this appreciation of a man, a filmmaker, and a city
The Death of Stalin
By Lauren Kaminsky
History becomes cathartic farce in Armando Iannucci’s comedy-all-star retelling of the political backroom battle for succession in postwar USSR
Helen Mirren
By Ella Taylor
This year’s Chaplin Award honoree at the Film Society of Lincoln Center has made a career of sensual sangfroid on both sides of the Atlantic
Spoor
By Amy Taubin
Agnieszka Holland takes no prisoners in her sardonic saga of a woman who stands up against the hunting industry and the male power structure of her Polish town
Personal Problems
By Howard Hampton
A nearly forgotten early ’80s video epic from the brilliant Ganja and Hess director Bill Gunn is an unexpected aesthetic marvel and a major rediscovery
Grosses Gloss
By Alberto Flores
A look back at the three-ring circus of 2017, from the Disney-Fox merger to the Netflix-Amazon conundrum, and all the box-office highs and lows in between
DEPARTMENTS
THE PRE-SHOW | News, views, conversations, and other things to get worked up about
News, Inspired: Lucrecia Martel on Zama, Release Me: RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening by Nicolas Rapold, Directions: Lynne Ramsay interviewed by Jonathan Romney, Restoration Row: Yuzo Kawashima’s Elegant Beast by Max Nelson
CRITICS’ CHOICE
Critics rate and comment on new releases
MAKE IT REAL | The wide, wide world of cinematic nonfiction
Shirkers and Minding the Gap by Eric Hynes
ART AND CRAFT | Filmmaking according to the makers
First Assistant Director Tim Bird
PLAYING ALONG | Music and the movies
The decoupage of The Fall by Nick Pinkerton
INSIDE STORIES | Redefining the boundaries of the new-media age
Gorogoa by Jeff Reichert
FINEST HOUR | One actor, one performance
Thomas Mitchell in Moontide (1942) by Sheila O’M
