For a long time, if justice had a name, it had to be Lt. Columbo.
Bing Liu's Minding the Gap eschews traditional narrative arcs, touring wreckage of the past—a past that is still driving and informing the present—and redefining cinematic language as a means to an uncertain end.
Watching Boys State now is a strange experience—I try to spot myself in the movie and am mostly unable to.
If Rurouni Kenshin could be said to have a central thesis, it is this: healing is necessary to justice. And if justice is not derived from healing, it may not even be justice at all.
Norma Rae captures a glimpse of a history I can’t experience, the feel and sound and sweat of it.
French director Ladj Ly picks up Victor Hugo’s matters of poverty, injustice, and revolt and runs with them—far enough away to reclaim Les Misérables for a 21st century country.
We have a moral obligation to be merciful, not just because it’s the humane thing to do—though it almost always is, even in the face of atrocity—but because of the minority report.
While Revenge cuts a swath through the sandbox of some of the tropes of its genre, Coralie Fargeat's film is also powerfully, screamingly feminist.
Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds operates on two levels for its entirety; it both imagines a different story and examines the ones we’ve already told.
The Conformist demonstrates how the violence of fascism often grows not from evil, but from nothingness.
Through its musical score and immersive soundscape, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory attunes us to the fundamental dissonance and discord of broken human institutions.
Nausicaä is a hero, but it’s not enough to want her to lead us, or to wait for her to save us. We must become her.