The Most Beautiful

Oct 21, 2019 — Songbook If you weren’t a devotee of the Cantopop world in the early 1990s, the casting of Faye Wong in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) may not have caught your attention. Starring in her first major role, the singer looked...

Dec 10, 2013 — In 1998, I interviewed Little Edie Beale, the surviving star of 1976’s Grey Gardens, one of the Maysles brothers’ numerous masterworks (Gimme Shelter, Meet Marlon Brando, and With Love from Truman are equal in technical and emotional innovation). Miss Beale,...

Dec 7, 2010 — This exploration of how technology alters its users was not only prophetic but a personal artistic breakthrough for David Cronenberg.

Aug 28, 2000 — In what is arguably his most popular and enduring feature, W. C. Fields nails the American tendency to inflate one’s importance.

May 24, 2018 — In the 1940s, legendary British filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger took the eye-popping, beautifully saturated palette of Technicolor to delirious new heights. For this month’s episode of Observations on Film Art, now playing on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck, scholar Kristin Thompson explores...

Mar 15, 2016 — Today, we’re celebrating horror maestro David Cronenberg’s seventy-third birthday with a look back at his brilliantly twisted oeuvre.

Feb 24, 2014 — A film of explosive passions, Abdellatif Kechiche’s coming-of-age triumph is about much more than just physical pleasure.

May 21, 2007 — “The Harry Lime Theme” has never gone out of print since its release, and it’s been recorded by over four hundred artists, from the Beatles to Guy Lombardo.

Sep 22, 2023 — John Waters goes Hollywood, Terence Davies reads a poem, and Marguerite Duras tears it all down.

May 25, 2022 — Mira Nair’s sumptuous second feature explores migration, rebellion, and romance across racial borders in the American South.