Portside

Cool, elegant, and devastating, a film as tightly woven and plaintive as the source novel itself. It’s an artifact of its time, both 1929 and in 2021, when the questions around identity have morphed and shifted but are still relevant as ever.

“The Harder They Fall”, the dynamic black western, corrects the historical record. Manifest Destiny may have been a uniquely Anglo-Saxon concept, but white people weren’t alone in the westward expansion that followed the Civil War.

The beautiful souls that created free jazz — including Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry and Carla Bley — light up this new documentary from Tom Surgal.

Central to "Cousins" is the struggle of the Maoris to retain ownership of their age-old lands in the face of settler colonialism dating back to the British invasion of Aotearoa/New Zealand by 1840.

Cinephiles and streaming fans can both claim victory. But as we better understand the new screen culture taking shape, it looks like we may all lose in the long run.

The movie’s got Sly and the Family Stone and B.B. King and Ray Barretto and Gladys Knight & the Pips, in top, electric form. But no jolt compares to what happens in the middle of this thing— footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival.

The new film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show relegated its Black Latinx community to the background and sparked a debate about colorism.

Lizzie Borden’s restored and rereleased radical feminist movie is as scrappy and smart as it was in 1983. It's a fantasy about how 10 years after peaceful revolution a supposedly socialist state rules.

So exuberant and full of life that it would convince you movies were back even if they hadn’t gone anywhere, “In the Heights” is the kind of electrifying theatrical experience that people have been waxing nostalgic about since the pandemic began.