The Criterion Collection
Mar 29, 2016 — Les Blank’s long-lost documentary revels in the trippy, eccentric world of and surrounding Tulsa Sound pioneer Leon Russell, transforming what might have been a standard concert movie into a genuine work of art.
Nov 17, 2015 — Satyajit Ray began his filmmaking career by offering a vision of the young Apu, the character he would go on to follow throughout the three films of his stunning breakthrough epic.
Essays
Oct 21, 2015 — Masaki Kobayashi takes on broken vows and the unreality of the past in his sensual and spooky four-part adaptation of Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese folktales.
Oct 27, 2014 — Though he emerged from established stage and screen comedy traditions, Tati invented a completely new filmic language.
Jun 20, 2013 — The prophetic voice of H. G. Wells resonates throughout this singularly ambitious, spectacularly designed vision.
Mar 26, 2013 — Charlie Chaplin manages to make a ruthless murderer likable in his brilliant satire of middle-class morality.
In Theaters
Dec 13, 2012 — Repertory PicksThe Museum of Modern Art in New York is holding its first full retrospective of the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini in more than twenty years. Starting tonight and running through January 5, the series will include not only...
Feb 22, 2012 — When it comes to depicting actual people’s jobs, the truism goes, Hollywood gets everything wrong with stunning regularity. The rare exception is Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959), widely considered among the finest trial films ever made, and maybe...
Dec 13, 2011 — Just what is it that makes Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966) so different, so appealing? The cherubic hero in the neat powder blue suit, who looks like he was torn out of a yakuza pop-up book? That hauntingly cornball theme...
Essays
Aug 18, 2011 — Stanley Kubrick’s labyrinthine 1956 heist flick The Killing—an exploded rethink of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and eventual template for the narrative convolutions of Reservoir Dog—became an instant facet in the jewel that was film noir, even as it refracted...