Essays

In Lucille Carra’s poetic adaptation of a classic travelogue by Donald Richie, an exploration of life in Japan’s Inland Sea becomes a path to self-discovery.

Brought to harrowing life in this film adaptation, George Orwell’s dystopian vision continues to ring true today. But so does his belief in the power of love and hope to overthrow the darkness.

Even as it inexorably rolls toward tragedy, Spike Lee’s masterpiece takes in the symphonic scale of the human condition in all its variety and precariousness.

In his first major film to capture the Provençal setting that would come to define his work, Marcel Pagnol brilliantly combined comedy and emotion, theater and cinema.

Alan J. Pakula’s partnership with a newly politicized Jane Fonda turned what could have been a run-of-the-mill detective movie into a psychologically vivid portrait of a strong female character.

This darkly comic vision of survival and deception during the Holocaust captures a crisis of ideological fanaticism that continues to plague contemporary Europe.

Sergei Bondarchuk pulled out all the stops to bring Tolstoy’s sprawling vision to the screen, and the result remains one of the most extravagant epic films of all time.

A work of rapturous energy, John Cameron Mitchell’s beloved debut feature is a freewheeling rock-and-roll musical suffused with heartbreak and pleasure.

In his idiosyncratic, award-winning second film, Bruno Dumont uses the story of an alienated police detective to investigate the most elemental aspects of human experience.

Bruno Dumont’s remarkable first feature examines the intermingling of the sacred and the profane in the French provinces.

In their most sublime collaboration, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers perfected a seamless blend of song, dance, and swooning romance.

In this series of intense chamber dramas influenced by the work of August Strindberg, Ingmar Bergman grapples with Europe’s collective crisis of faith in the modern era.

In one of her most buoyant films, Agnès Varda captured the emotional complexities at the heart of women’s struggle to win autonomy over their own bodies.

With this controversial treatise on violence and media, Michael Haneke created a spectacle that is both intensely watchable and hard to stomach.

With the help of intense performances by Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift, William Wyler turns the genteel spaces of a Manhattan town house into an emotional battleground.

A celebrated work of Australian cinema, this deeply felt coming-of-age tale is fueled by the independent spirit of three remarkable female artists: novelist Miles Franklin, director Gillian Armstrong, and actor Judy Davis.

With these twin monuments of Hong Kong action filmmaking, Jackie Chan catapulted to international stardom, perfecting a unique blend of athleticism and populism.

With the current rise of faux-populist demagogues around the globe, this incisive satire of media’s toxic influence on politics is as relevant as it’s ever been.

Injecting the Czechoslovak New Wave with postmodern rage and formal risk, Jan Němec’s debut feature is a merciless look at human consciousness under siege.

At a time when Mexican audiences were taught to equate good cinema with foreign cinema, Carlos Reygadas heralded the arrival of something new with his audaciously poetic first feature.

Kicking off a career that would go on to explore the mysteries of pop culture, Robert Zemeckis’s first feature revisits the weekend the Beatles set youth culture ablaze with their American debut.

Obsessed with Edgar G. Ulmer’s B-movie masterpiece from the first time he saw it, writer Robert Polito dives deep into the past to unravel the mysteries surrounding a film that almost never existed.

In her sole feature-length directorial achievement, Barbara Loden eliminates the boundary between actor and character, crafting a revelatory portrait of a woman without an identity.

There was more to Harold Lloyd than laughter. In one of his best movies, the silent-film legend deftly balanced elements of action and romance with his signature slapstick set pieces.