In This Corner of the World

Jun 26, 2013 — On the life and work of the famous Czech author, and the pleasures and challenges of translating him.

Mar 15, 2004 — This Japanese classic’s guiding passion is hunger, and its central image—a gaping black hole in the earth—is that of an all-consuming maw.

Mar 3, 2020 — American cinema is over 125 years old, and African Americans have been a part of it from the beginning. This participation has often been fraught, stymied, and curtailed, but the desire to use motion pictures to craft a self-image has...

May 14, 2019 — It all comes down to that first wink. About half an hour through Michael Haneke’s 1997 cause célèbre Funny Games, Paul (Arno Frisch), one of the two politely psychotic young home invaders who’ve taken a family captive, leads one of his...

Jun 9, 2014 — In the history of cinema, there have been several notable collaborations between a director and an actress over a series of films. Think of D. W. Griffith and Lillian Gish back in the silent era, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene...

Oct 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...

Sep 29, 2021 — Celebrate the spooky month with our collection dedicated to cinema’s most legendary monsters and a series of chilling home-invasion thrillers.

Apr 2, 2021 — This week people are writing and talking about Eric Rohmer, Michael Mann, Adam Curtis, the new Jump Cut, and the king of the “geezer teasers.”

Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.

Jan 9, 2026 — The director of some of the bleakest films ever made once claimed all they were all comedies—except one.