The Criterion Collection
Oct 24, 2013 — In John Cassavetes’s personal cinema, the director was always trying to break away from the formulas of Hollywood narrative, in order to uncover some fugitive truth about the way people behave. At the same time, he took seriously his responsibilities...
Essays
Sep 18, 2013 — This chapter about director Richard Linklater’s beginnings, from the 1996 book Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema, is by the former producer’s representative, creator and host of IFC’s Split Screen, and...
Sep 10, 2013 — Martin Ritt’s 1965 movie of John le Carré’s first great novel (and first best seller), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, declares “a plague on all your houses” to capitalists, Communists, and ruthless intelligence operatives. It’s one espionage...
Essays
Aug 13, 2013 — John Frankenheimer burrows into the insidious side of the American sixties in his visually dazzling thriller.
May 21, 2013 — It’s tough to tell where reality ends and fiction begins in Haskell Wexler’s deft chronicle of a turbulent era.
Apr 22, 2013 — A vivid portrait of a ruthless murderer, Laurence Olivier’s Technicolor Shakespeare adaptation is back in a killer restoration.
Mar 29, 2013 — When the world’s favorite comedian asked his audience to see him as a sociopathic serial killer, he was venturing where cinema had barely dared to tread.
Feb 25, 2013 — When an ethnographic filmmaker and a sociologist joined forces, they helped change the course of nonfiction cinema.
Jan 30, 2013 — The improvisational arts of filmmaking, jazz, and chili.
Jan 22, 2013 — Andrei Tarkovsky’s austere, minimalist, and poetic film was the first major accomplishment in an oeuvre that would become one of Russia’s main contributions to the treasury of world cinema.