The Portrait

Oct 12, 1998 — Are there cultural purists still remaining who would argue that the “Westernized” title of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece—High and Low—throws polluted water on the cosmological fire of its given name: Tengoku to jigoku—literally, Heaven and Hell?Kurosawa’s once insisted-upon reputation as...

Aug 20, 2018 — The star and producer of The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez made a trailblazing intervention in an iconically American genre, creating an indelible portrait of a Latino American hero.

Feb 13, 2018 — With the scrappiest of means, George A. Romero created not only a landmark of independent cinema but also an indelible portrait of America as hellscape.

May 19, 2016 — In the late 1950s, when Shindo chose to create a nearly dialogue-free portrait of a family living on a remote island, he was taking a great chance, putting the fate of his struggling production company Kindai Eiga Kyokai on the...

Apr 29, 2025 — In this exuberant and moving portrait of a Brooklyn sex worker, Sean Baker draws on themes he has explored throughout his career, depicting the workaday grind of twenty-first-century American existence with biting humor and clear-eyed humanity.

Aug 16, 2022 — The Safdie brothers drew inspiration from their childhood memories for their first feature as codirectors, a terrifying yet wondrous portrait of an unpredictable father.

Aug 28, 2012 — A frenetic portrait of New York as well as a love story, Paul Fejos’s film captures the odd sensation of being alone in the big city, even when in a crowd.

Four surrealist dreams, a portrait of Bombay’s street life, a 1980s touchstone, an ecstatic documentary, a windswept enchantment, and one of the fastest and funniest films ever made

Acclaimed for a delicate portrait of queer Black adolescence and an ambitious epic set in the era of Jim Crow, the Nashville-born writer and director has distinguished herself as a major new force in contemporary American cinema.

Chris Darke is a writer and film critic based in London. His work has appeared in Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Trafic, and the Independent. He is also the author of Light Readings: Film Criticism and Screen Arts, a monograph...