You Are the Film

Jun 22, 2011 — Theresa Russell is attracted to the very things that repel most actors. In 1976’s The Last Tycoon, her first movie (and Elia Kazan’s last), she is unafraid of seeming to do very little. Young actresses like to show you they...

Jan 26, 2010 — "All roads lead to Rome Open City,” Jean-Luc Godard once said, playing on the old Italian proverb—and meaning, we can assume, that when thinking about modern cinema, one always has to come to terms with Roberto Rossellini’s seminal film. Indeed,...

Nov 16, 2008 — Chungking Express (1994) was the Masculin féminin of the 1990s, a pop-art movie about cool twentysomethings looking for love in the city that has replaced Paris as the center of the world-cinema imagination. What Jean-Luc Godard did for “the children...

Apr 21, 2008 — Juan Antonio Bardem combines neorealism with noir thriller to create a new dialect that would forge a new Spanish cinematic language.

Mar 10, 2003 — Vilgot Sjöman’s cultural-sexual sensation sparked much critical and popular mayhem, only to be consigned to nearly instantaneous oblivion.

Oct 18, 1994 — It’s useless to take a lofty view on an instant schlock horror classic, but there are reasons why John Carpenter’s Halloween, alone in the last decade, stands with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and, before that, with...

Mar 30, 1992 — John Schlesinger’s controversial masterpiece made moviegoers squirm with its bold, bleak portrayal of unrequited love, gay and otherwise, and it remains as jolting and thought-provoking as ever.

May 28, 2013 — For Haskell Wexler, the director of Medium Cool, and the Oscar-winning cinematographer of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Bound for Glory, writing about his ten favorite Criterion films became a trip down memory lane. His responses, made up of...

Sep 30, 2022 — We’re reading interviews with Garret Bradley and Don Hertzfeldt and a marvelous account of the making of Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Jul 10, 2026 — We’re celebrating the Harry Dean Stanton centennial, listening to Ross McElwee and Tsai Ming-liang, and revisiting the work of Bruce Conner.