Passion

Mar 24, 2003 — Straw Dogs turns on a woman’s rape, and one can’t blame pictures for depicting. But the film shows the woman, after some tart resistance, seeming to enjoy it, and this approaches the apex of what a delicate soul might call...

Dec 9, 2002 — What makes Jean-Luc Godard’s classic so unique a viewing experience today, even more than in 1963, is the way it stimulates an audience’s intelligence as well as its senses.

Oct 21, 2002 — The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is one of the great works of art in the history of film, and yet, except for some recent television screenings, this British production is largely unknown in the United States. This is...

Jun 3, 2002 — By any standard, The Horse’s Mouth shines as an outstandingly personal work from a decade that often seems the most arid in British cinema. Amid tepid comedies and timid thrillers, it sparkles with conviction and eccentricity—at least that’s how it...

Sep 17, 2001 — Jirí Menzel’s war comedy is an absurdist symphony of self-absorption and impotence.

Dec 18, 2000 — Elegant humor cloaks despair in Luis Buñuel’s masterwork, wherein greedy characters flee their toxic lives and find refuge in the loneliness of dreams.

Nov 22, 1999 — Grand Illusion is the masterpiece that earned Jean Renoir enormous acclaim in the United States, exciting the admiration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and running for 26 weeks in New York after its opening in September 1938. Banned in Italy...

Jan 11, 1999 — David Lean followed his prodigious adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations with this brilliant crystallization of Dickens’ Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. It deploys the cinema’s special powers of dash and immediacy to convey all the venturesomeness and...

Nov 23, 1998 — Paul Morrissey’s cult classic has obvious appeal for the lover of Grand Guignol—but it equally addresses the thoughtful.

Nov 23, 1998 — Paul Morrissey’s gory comedy may be sensationally shlocky, yet it explores profound ideas about sexual liberty, individualistic freedom, and the commodification of everyday life.