When screenwriter, director, producer, actor, novelist, stock options trader, playwright, musician, newspaper columnist and gallery artist Melvin Van Peebles died last week at the age of 89, he left behind one of the most varied and entertaining bodies of work in all of American (and French, thanks to his Parisian detour in the 1960s) arts and letters. He’s best known for his revolutionary 1971 feature Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, but that classic—important as it is as a point of reference and inspiration for generations of independent filmmakers—only scratches the surface of Van Peebles’s genius and audacity. Thankfully, the Criterion Collection […]

A summer action movie (based on a pre-existing comic book) starring Charlize Theron may feel like a familiar recipe for a blockbuster hit. But as envisioned by Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Old Guard is less cookie-cutter, multiplex fodder than a humanist portrait of independent contractors who just happen to be immortal beings keeping the peace.  From the Crusades through the Civil War and, as the film opens, America’s current War on Terror, the old guard consists of its leader, Andy (Theron) and three men (Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli) who have fought in every war the world has ever […]