The Color of Pomegranates: Parajanov Unbound
Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov explored his Transcaucasian roots in this visually spectacular and wonderfully strange ode to the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova.
The River: A New Authenticity
When Noël Met David . . .
Fish Tank: An England Story
Andrea Arnold shows a tremendous empathy toward her downtrodden characters in this portrait of a teenage girl on the cusp of womanhood.
All Those Things That Are to Die: Antichrist
Before the Rain: Never-Ending Story
Before the Rain brought a vision of “Balkan conflict” to the world that caused a sensation in the mid-1990s, winning the Golden Lion in Venice and an Academy Award nomination. Five years of increasingly horrific news from the former Yugoslavia, w
…The Lion Has Wings: The Lion Triumphant
Britain’s heraldic coat of arms features two creatures, a lion and a unicorn, which have often been taken to symbolize the qualities of strength and imagination. As Britain stood on the threshold of a long-dreaded war in 1939, Alexander Korda decid
…Tales from the Lives of Marionettes
Why would a filmmaker simply film an opera? Many admirers of Michael Powell’s have assumed that the decision to make The Tales of Hoffmann, in 1950, was in some way an admission by Powell and his long-term partner, Emeric Pressburger, that they cou
…The Horse’s Mouth
By any standard, The Horse’s Mouth shines as an outstandingly personal work from a decade that often seems the most arid in British cinema.
The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class may not be recognized as a neglected masterpiece—at least, not yet. But if we remember how long it took for Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons and Renoir’s Rules of the Game to be recognized as supreme anatomies of social uneas
…I Know Where I’m Going!
I Know Where I’m Going! is a love story that is also a fable. Joan Webster thinks she knows exactly where she’s going: to marry the richest industrialist in Britain. But when the elements stop her from reaching a remote Scottish island where the
…