The Current
A magazine of film culture past and present, with new articles, interviews, and videos published every day
Recent Articles
Miloš Forman, the Open-Hearted Nonconformist
Boasting the longest, most versatile career of any Czechoslovak New Waver, the late master made films mixed with deep compassion and an antiauthoritarian spirit.
10 Things I Learned: One Sings, the Other Doesn’t
The producer of our edition of Agnès Varda’s feminist musical explores the film’s roots in the women’s movement and how the director achieved its warm, playful tone.
Paul Dano’s Closet Picks
The actor-director stopped by our offices to stock up on movies by Yasujiro Ozu, Edward Yang, and other filmmakers who have shaped his sensibility.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch: She Sings the Body Electric
A work of rapturous energy, John Cameron Mitchell’s beloved debut feature is a freewheeling rock-and-roll musical suffused with heartbreak and pleasure.
Spontaneous Play in Parade
Professor Kristin Thompson takes a closer look at the formal ingenuity and comic dexterity of Jacques Tati’s underappreciated final film.
How Bruno Dumont’s Cinema Gives Flesh to Philosophy
The French iconoclast explains how his background in industrial filmmaking helped him bring life to abstract ideas about the human condition.
Designing Dumont
Combining elements of her own paintings with an improvisatory Photoshop process, artist Vivienne Flesher captured the grim beauty of Bruno Dumont’s cinema for our releases of La vie de Jésus and L’humanité.
Jeremy Workman’s Top 10
A frequent Criterion collaborator who has edited many of our trailers, the director of The World Before Your Feet charts the evolution of his movie love through multiple formats and new technologies.
L’humanité: Ordinary Human Behavior
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.
La vie de Jésus: The Sky Above
Bruno Dumont’s remarkable first feature examines the intermingling of the sacred and the profane in the French provinces.
Tears Left to Cry: Jeon Do-yeon in Secret Sunshine
The Cannes-award-winning lead performance in Lee Chang-dong’s masterful melodrama captures both the pain and perverse pleasure of public crying.
A Newly Restored Paris Struts Back into Theaters
Starting this weekend, Janus Films is putting Jennie Livingston’s extraordinary snapshot of Harlem’s drag balls of the 1980s back on the big screen.
Video
Spotlight
Songbook
Some of cinema’s most memorable moments are fueled by one perfectly chosen tune on the soundtrack. In this series, writers explore what happens when music and image meet.
