Cinema - Quillette

A still of Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy trailer.

A History of Stunts

Ryan Gosling’s new film is a love letter to an under-appreciated art.

Allan Stratton

17 May 2024 · 9 min read

Actor Nick Offerman as the President of the US during a public address. A still from the film.

American Carnage

Alex Garland’s spectacular new film ‘Civil War’ is a warning of what can happen to democracies when civil society collapses.

Allan Stratton

18 Apr 2024 · 6 min read

A still of Anne Wiazemsky and Jean-Pierre Leaud in Le Chinoise. They are sitting at a table reading and smoking cigarettes.

Jean-Luc Godard in Retrospect Part II: Fanaticism and Failure (1966–2022)

After half a decade of critical adulation, Godard’s career slumped into doctrinaire Maoism, bitterness, incomprehensibility, and irrelevance. It never recovered.

Charlotte Allen

16 Apr 2024 · 36 min read

A woman and two men, snapping their fingers. Image from Band à Part (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)

Jean-Luc Godard in Retrospect Part I: Abstraction Hero (1930–65)

A brief five-year period produced nearly all the Godard movies that film aficionados still remember, but even these celebrated works have dated poorly.

Charlotte Allen

10 Apr 2024 · 33 min read

John Belushi as John “Bluto” Blutarsky in Animal House (John Landis, 1978)

The Delta Variant

John Landis’s 1978 comedy classic ‘Animal House’ is a time capsule from an era when humor and campus politics were very different.

George Case

8 Apr 2024 · 9 min read

Sex and Smashed Steel

A look back at J.G. Ballard's ‘Crash’—one of the the 20th century’s greatest and most disturbingly prophetic novels.

Benjamin Kerstein

2 Apr 2024 · 25 min read

Werner Herzog in 2011. Wikimedia Commons.

Mystic Without a Church

Werner Herzog’s new memoir provides a look back on the magisterial and occasionally maddening career of a cinematic visionary.

Jaspreet Singh Boparai

28 Mar 2024 · 17 min read

93 Years of Shatner

A tribute to an irrepressible TV star’s ability to live long and prosper.

Kevin Mims

22 Mar 2024 · 20 min read

An Unlikely Cinematic Triumph

Efforts to produce a worthy film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ seemed doomed to failure—until Denis Villeneuve gave us his two-part blockbuster.

Allan Stratton

15 Mar 2024 · 14 min read

A Love Letter to the Theatre

An interview with Sean Mathias, the director of a daring and original new film adaptation of ‘Hamlet.’

Hannah Gal

10 Mar 2024 · 11 min read

Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny Fight Fascism

The animation industry was perhaps the United States’ most potent cultural weapon during World War II.

Jacob Bielecki

26 Feb 2024 · 14 min read

The Best Picture Nominees, 2024

A look at the ten nominees for this year’s Best Picture Oscar.

Allan Stratton

17 Feb 2024 · 17 min read

Bestseller Reparations

In ‘American Fiction,’ director Cord Jefferson brings a devil-may-care effrontery to bear on the culture of self-censorship, progressive pieties, and artistic hypocrisy.