Flicks with The Film Snob

Bernard Shaw’s popular comedy, about a phonetics professor who makes a bet that he can turn a street person into a lady, was given near perfect form in a 1938 movie starring Leslie Howard and Wendy H…

A married woman visits three friends in the city, and we are inspired to consider what is the nature of happiness for women in a “man’s world.”

An undesirable side-effect of watching lots of Hollywoo…

The Harlem Cultural Festival was a music festival taking place in the same summer of 1969 as Woodstock, and its amazing line-up, and insight into how it happened, is finally presented, 52 years later…

Wes Anderson’s playful new film is presented as an issue of a Paris-based American magazine, with three stories about the eternal appeal of non-conformists.

Wes Anderson has a style that is decidedly…

A film from Norway about a young woman seeking fulfillment in relationships takes the conventions of romantic comedy and turns them over to reveal the male-centered trap underneath.

The Worst Person…

Mike Leigh’s 1988 breakthrough film already contains what makes him great: working class issues, funny believable characters, and a fine sensitivity for the miseries of family life.

For decades I’ve …

A brother and sister, their addict mother in jail, try to get by under the poverty line in a depressed southern Ohio town, and end up hanging out with some dangerous people. Out of nowhere comes this…

Almodóvar’s latest explores the ambiguities of motherhood, while also spotlighting the issue of memory in the Spanish Civil War.

Spanish writer and director Pedro Almodóvar’s previous film from 2019…

In 1937, Warner Brothers released a film attacking the rise of hate groups in America that were terrorizing immigrants and minorities. Humphrey Bogart stars in this extraordinary movie.

After the Sec…

A film about an agent of a Swiss bank working to support the military dictatorship in 1980s Argentina reveals how little it takes for people to look away from evil when being silent is to their advan…

Jane Campion’s first film in twelve years examines deceptive notions of manhood on a cattle ranch in 1920s Montana.

New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was a big part of the cinematic breakthrough of …

Jacques Rivette’s experimental joyride features two women whose explorations of a haunted house serve to turn all the conventions of film and genre upside down.

French director Jacques Rivette has be…

A tragic love story with echoes from a German fairy tale shows director Christian Petzold exploring the heavy influence of the past on relationships in the present.

German writer-director Christian P…

The true story of a large Romanian family living in a wilderness area facing the threat of being forced to move to the big city.

The picture opens with a group of boys playing in a lake, trying to c…

An ambitious young man from a lower caste seeks to prosper by attaching himself to a corrupt businessman and his family, in this thriller doubling as a satire of modern India.

The deep chasm between…

Emma Seligman’s debut feature uses a shiva, a Jewish post-funeral gathering, as the setting for a comedy about a young woman who doesn’t fit in, but tries to act like she does.

Shiva Baby, a comedy o…

A new film from the West African nation of Ivory Coast presents an intriguing allegory about power and its misuse. Night of the Kings, the second narrative feature of Ivorian director Philippe Lacôte…

Gus Van Sant’s 1991 film portrays the difficult yet tender world of runaways.

One of my favorite working American directors is Gus Van Sant. His adventurous style was evident in his early films, of w…

One of the most unusual examples of propaganda ever filmed, made in the midst of the Second World War, imagines what it would be like if Germans captured a small English town in preparation for a maj…