Portside

Films from Tantura to Descendant challenge the powerful. But it’s still up to us to witness the truth. The past can’t be changed. But if we won’t tell the truth about it, we can’t learn from it. We can’t even understand ourselves.

Over this next century, China wants to use the movies to rebrand itself, and it has learned how to do so from the best.

Two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi hits home once more with this complex tale of a debtor who tries to make good.

A new documentary film recounts how Hampshire College students and alumni rallied to save their renowned 60’s-era experimental college from its own scheming administration.

“Prayers for the Stolen” shines a much-needed light on the consequences of Mexico’s war on drugs, specifically highlighting the plight of the nation’s women and girls. The film is a contender for an Oscar for best International Film.

The scariest thing about Don’t Look Up is that absurd as it is, it barely exaggerates. Much of our political elite are just as greedy and foolish, our media just as vapid, and our response to impending disaster exactly as mind-bogglingly irrational.

Amid Cold War paranoia, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI set its sights on a potential source of communist subversion: Frank Capra’s Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy introduced us to a working-class kid from Queens struggling to both save his city and pay the rent. Disney has wealthy new benefactors rewriting just what it means to be a superhero.

Looking for something other than sappy Christmas movies to watch over the holidays? There is no greater and more prescient skewering of the absurdity of the American national security state than Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.

This year could be different.  As the awards race heats up and smaller accolades roll in, there are multiple queer film contenders in almost every big category.