The Criterion Collection
Sep 3, 2007 — It came from nowhere, it’s always been here—or so Stranger Than Paradise might seem.Jim Jarmusch had completed his first feature, Permanent Vacation, in 1980 and spent the next four years working on his second. Screened a few times as a...
Jul 23, 2007 — It’s hard to think of an artist who better exemplifies the obscuring ebb and flow of film history than Raymond Bernard.
Jan 22, 2007 — Spencer Gordon Bennet’s eclectic science fiction–adventure movie bundles a serious patriotic message within its retelling of the Odysseus myth.
Essays
Nov 27, 2006 — Centered on the destruction wrought by unbridled female eros, Pandora’s Box would, in its shockingly modern, instinct-driven psychology, end up defining both its director and its star.
Oct 31, 2006 — The obvious question is: Why are we doing this? And the only answer is that it just seems like the right thing to do. The Criterion Collection is at an awkward age. By Variety and Hollywood Reporter standards, we’re not...
Oct 23, 2006 — Throughout the sixties and seventies, the Italian director created a series of political dramas that were at once provocations, exposés, puzzles, and acts of virtuosity.
Jul 10, 2006 — In his unpredictable daily encounters with the gorilla Koko and her teacher, Barbet Schroeder foregrounds the quiddity of Koko’s situation in episodic fashion.
Jun 19, 2006 — This essay originally appeared in the fanzine PHOTON (issue #22), in 1972. Stop-motion animation has been attracting a growing number of enthusiasts for about the last ten years, and though it seems the majority of these people must out of...
Apr 17, 2006 — Another movie, another cause célèbre: this mysterious film by Orson Welles has been dismissed as a disaster and hailed as a masterpiece.
Jul 11, 2005 — The trickily variant sensibilities of the three daydreams and their long duration are what mark Unfaithfully Yours as a stray modernist object.