The Half of It

Feb 28, 2019 — The spring 2019 issues are out—and Jonathan Rosenbaum is rolling out a new two-volume collection.

Feb 11, 2019 — Thomas Heise, Stephan Geene, and Lei Lei innovatively reconstruct stories from the not-so-distant past.

May 22, 2017 — Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer “makes the absurd, amazing The Lobster seem like a warm and cuddly experience by comparison,” declares Jessica Kiang at the Playlist. “A film of clean hands, cold heart, and near-Satanic horror, it...

May 18, 2017 — “Like a Judd Apatow thriller or a Michael Haneke kids flick, the concept of a Claire Denis comedy at first sounds like a contradiction in terms,” begins Jordan Mintzer in the Hollywood Reporter. “After all, the 71-year-old French auteur, whose...

Oct 5, 2016 — Rock critic Robert Christgau examines the evocative use of three early Leonard Cohen songs in Robert Altman’s brilliant revisionist western.

Jan 19, 2016 — Inside Llewyn Davis takes its protagonist on a Hero’s Journey of characteristically Coen-esque proportions—a voyage at turns serious and comic, and framed by an exquisitely curated selection of folk melodies.

Nov 26, 2010 — Early in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, as the wind from the Texas plains whips the small town of Anarene, the high-school senior Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) halts his recalcitrant pickup truck—Hank Williams is warbling “Why Don’t You Love...

Jul 21, 2008 — A dreamy alternative to the standard notion of horror, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s phantasmal film reimagined the figure of the vampire.

Sep 3, 2007 — I’m on a flight back from the Telluride Film Festival and two and a half great days in the mountains. Telluride has been an important festival for Criterion and Janus for years. It’s a great opportunity to mingle with filmmakers...

Feb 12, 2007 — Vittorio De Sica’s seminal drama renounces “egoism” for collective concern, envisioning a cinema of impassioned social conscience.