Features

Rejecting the repression of Franco-era Spain, Pedro Almodóvar made his name with exuberant films set in an eternal present. But by the turn of the century, his cinema began to drift toward memories of a not so distant past.

Over the course of her five-decade career, one of cinema’s greatest globe-trotters brought her musical, richly expressive voice to an impressive array of cultural contexts.

Agnieszka Holland challenges romantic notions of civil unrest and revolutionary activism in her magnificently bleak period miniseries Burning Bush, which is now available to stream on the Criterion Channel.

The foremost chronicler of punk made films that captured the messy contradictions and sheer rage at the heart of the phenomenon.

Flashbacks

Boasting the longest, most versatile career of any Czechoslovak New Waver, the late master made films mixed with deep compassion and an antiauthoritarian spirit.

Performances

The Cannes-award-winning lead performance in Lee Chang-dong’s masterful melodrama captures both the pain and perverse pleasure of public crying.

One Scene

The director of the Sundance hit The Last Black Man in San Francisco reflects on what he learned from Ken Russell’s extravagant style and approach to the subject of male relationships.

Alec Guinness carved out a place among the greatest of British actors by mixing his demure persona with dry wit and a taste for the absurd.

With the help of MGM’s most ingenious photographers, screen goddesses like Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford made the still portrait a key part of their artistry.

Cannes 2019

The sorry state of the world resulted in a Cannes lineup filled with dark, dystopian visions, which also happened to be one of the strongest of recent years.

Songbook

The Platters’ impassioned rendition of the pop chestnut “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” highlights the irrevocable loss in Andrew Haigh’s marriage drama.

Performances

In her most explicitly autobiographical collaboration with director Hong Sang-soo, the once reviled actress conveys a deep inner life through a series of understated moments.

Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche grapple with the realities of middle-aged loneliness and the eternal quest for companionship in this candid quasi comedy.

One Scene

One of the quietest, most unassuming moments in Michael Haneke’s disturbing drama serves as a microcosm of his themes of control and sexuality.

Songbook

Mickey & Sylvia’s 1956 hit “Love Is Strange” injects a hint of lustful energy into a screen romance that is otherwise unsettlingly detached.

No Hollywood director brought as many memorable heroines to the screen as George Cukor, who was known throughout the industry as the quintessential “woman’s director.”

A politically engaged actor who refused to be commodified, this French icon showcased her piercing intelligence throughout four decades of unforgettable performances.

Performances

In the one great film role of his career, the comedian and radio personality used his beloved, minimalist performance style to capture the silliness of human vanity.

Dark Passages

In Frank Borzage’s Southern Gothic noir Moonrise, the actor captures a heartbreaking mixture of love and fear with his deeply empathetic (and very brief) portrayal of a deaf-mute.

One Scene

Early in his boundary-pushing Sweet Movie, Serbian renegade Dušan Makavejev stages a pageant of visual grotesquerie that speaks to the luridness of our contemporary age.

Flashbacks

One of the most audacious voices to emerge from Tito’s Yugoslavia, the late director had a genius for smuggling incendiary ideas into freewheeling satires.

One Scene

The great Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke recalls what his first encounters with Vittorio De Sica’s masterpiece taught him about the possibilities of cinematic realism.

Performances

The famously blustery comedy veteran transforms into a hilariously timid messenger in Howard Hawks’s fast-talking screwball masterpiece.

Songbook

With its irresistible momentum and sonic crunch, “Easy Livin’” occupies a special place in one of the most celebrated sequences in Olivier Assayas’s filmography.