The Playlist

The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.

Interviews

Watch: 5 Movies Roger Ebert Championed Including 'Do The Right Thing,' 'Hoop Dreams,' 'Monster' & More

By Kevin Jagernauth
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April 5, 2013 3:49 PM
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10 Comments

News

As many of The Playlist team wrote earlier today, the late Roger Ebert was instrumental for many of us discovering a nurturing what has become a lifelong passion of cinema. And much of that has to do with "At The Movies," his influential long running show with Gene Siskel (and in later, less satisfying years, Richard Roeper) that brought the movies into our homes with pointed critiques, debates, arguments and most of all, enthusiasm. While many have been digging up the Ebert's zingers and classic takedowns, we wanted to focus on the moments where he got truly excited and got behind a movie.

By Oliver Lyttelton
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August 9, 2012 9:01 AM
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3 Comments

News

Jason Bourne might be back this weekend, but there's one return that we're a little more excited about: Spike Lee, who has a new movie in theaters for the first time since 2008's "Miracle At St. Anna." And while that picture was a sprawling, World War Two epic, his latest, "Red Hook Summer," is a return to the kind of films that he made his name with, a small-scale drama about life on the streets of Brooklyn. And while it has divided critics a little, our own review came out firmly on the positive side of things.

By Oliver Lyttelton
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July 2, 2012 8:31 AM
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0 Comments

Features

On a weekend where record temperatures were being recorded in New York City, and elsewhere in the U.S., it's appropriate that two of the best films in theaters, "Magic Mike" and "Take This Waltz," both revolve around long, hot summers. And it's doubly appropriate that Saturday also marked the anniversary of perhaps the definitive heatwave movie: Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing." Of course, Lee's masterpiece isn't just a look at Brooklyn over a boiling hot summer day, it's also one of the greatest American films in the history of the medium, one whose critical reputation has only grown since Kim Basinger's protestation on stage at the Oscars the following year that it was the best film of 1989, and yet hadn't been nominated (although Danny Aiello got a nod, as did Lee's screenplay).