The Criterion Collection
Oct 21, 2014 — Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.
Oct 2, 2014 — People struggle to escape their socially dictated roles in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s moving, Douglas Sirk–inspired melodrama.
Aug 26, 2013 — From the beginning, it was clear that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was destined to shake up German cinema.
Mar 15, 2011 — Based on Louis Malle’s childhood memories, this period drama traces the wary, prickly friendship between two boys, one of whom is hiding from the Nazis.
Essays
Nov 23, 2010 — An overdub has no choice, an image cannot rejoice.—“Porpoise Song”Where there is choice, there is misery.—SwamiHow’s about some more steam?—Sonny Liston The final episode of the television show The Monkees aired March 25, 1968. Cowritten and directed by Micky Dolenz,...
Essays
Oct 19, 2010 — The themes, symbolism, and aesthetic forms of Akira Kurosawa’s films owe their origins to the ideas and sensibilities that captured his imagination as a young man.
Mar 23, 2010 — In myriad inventive ways, Terrence Malick’s philosophical drama shows us how nature and culture are always intertwined.
Jul 22, 2009 — Made in 1966 (so quickly that it could almost be considered an improvisation), Jean-Luc Godard’s twelfth feature is arguably the most quintessentially “Godardian” of the filmmaker’s early period— but for those of us in the United States, it is also...
Features
Jun 8, 2009 — As I write this, it has been a year and a half since Ingmar Bergman passed away—and I miss him daily. I miss his imagination and the comfort he gave, both personally and through his films. I got to know...
Apr 27, 2009 — The idea of making a film about Japan’s most famous sex crime, with a decent budget and in conditions of complete freedom, reawakened Nagisa Oshima’s desire to direct—and the prospect of circumventing Japanese censorship must have made the decision even...