Stuart Klawans

Film Critic

Winner of the National Magazine Award for his film reviews for The Nation, Stuart Klawans is author of the books Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order (a finalist for the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Awards) and Left in the Dark: Film Reviews and Essays, 1988-2001. When not on deadline for The Nation, he contributes articles to The New York Times, Parnassus: Poetry in Review and other publications.

December 30, 2020

Out of the Ether

On Mank, Let Them All Talk, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Minari, and more films from the end of 2020.

Stuart Klawans
CultureNovember 13, 2020

Living in Borat’s America

The sequel to Sascha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary attempts to again hold a mirror to the crudeness of American life. Does the stunt work a second time?

Stuart Klawans
CultureOctober 30, 2020

Making Room for the Real

A dispatch from this year’s mostly virtual New York Film Festival.

Stuart Klawans
FilmSeptember 11, 2020

Freakish, Horrifying, and Sometimes Wondrous Alternative Histories

On Lovecraft Country and Tesla.

Stuart Klawans
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FilmJuly 16, 2020

Shaking Up Your Perceptions

How films chosen for the Human Rights Watch Film Festival test the limits of both authority and documentary filmmaking.

Stuart Klawans
CultureMay 22, 2020

In the Time of Virtual Cinema

Theaters big and small have moved to streaming models as their physical locations have temporarily shuttered. Will moviegoing fundamentally change as a result?

Stuart Klawans
FilmApril 17, 2020

Stuart Gordon’s Alternative Avant-Garde

On the legacy of the horror movie auteur.

Stuart Klawans
FilmMarch 13, 2020

Between Yourself and This Bygone Place

On Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, Diao Yinan’s The Wild Goose Lake, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, and other recent films.

Stuart Klawans
FilmFebruary 7, 2020

Between the Old World and the New

On Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole and Patricio Guzmán’s The Cordillera of Dreams.

Stuart Klawans
FilmDecember 19, 2019

The Legend of ‘Queen & Slim’

Lena Waithe and Melina Matsoukas’s mythmaking, the Safide Brothers’s grotesque romp through New York, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and more December movies.

Stuart Klawans