"I’ve always espoused this dopey idea that everyone should have one Shakespeare play that they know inside out. Just pick one. For me, it’s Macbeth. I’ve seen countless performances and probably watched most every movie version. (Hey, Scotland, PA, I got your back!). For me, Roman Polanski’s Macbeth is really the greatest of all Macbeths (and would have to be in the running for best Shakespeare film). People often mention how it was Polanski’s first film after the Sharon Tate murder or how Hugh Hefner was a producer. Try to get past all the extracurricular stuff and just play’dst (with the English subtitles on, I’d suggest) for the incredible performances, the mastery of Polanski’s cine-aesthetic precision, and a bleakness that feels so relevant today. I love how it’s so true to the play yet also so clearly a Polanski film. It’s harrowing, visceral, and frightening, like all his best work."

"As narrated in his highly entertaining autobiography, over the course of his life Preston Sturges had a long string of failed schemes, inventions, films, and affairs. And it seems like he had the great fortune to find it all funny. The climax of Unfaithfully Yours, when every possible minor physical thing goes wrong in Rex Harrison’s murder plot, isn’t just perfect circus-like slapstick. It’s a downright celebration of the ways that record players, telephones, wicker chairs, and gloves are these ridiculous, weird contraptions we can barely use competently. We aren’t the masters of the physical world; it’s really a wonder we survive out there. This is the huge insight Unfaithfully Yours has over a film like Modern Times or any other techno-dystopia. Like, sure, sometimes machines crush the souls of humans into their perfectly calibrated gears. But most of the time, it’s a miracle if they fucking work."