† His Return

Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.

Jul 30, 2014 — A friend and longtime scholar of Jacques Demy ruminates on the great director’s career, as well as the port hometown they shared—which would become a magical movie location.

Jul 23, 2014 — Jacques Demy’s miraculous, melancholy musical is the rare film to use pastiche and artifice to go straight for the heart.

Feb 19, 2013 — Elia Kazan’s masterwork is a vivid, tough look at a time and place, and a transcendent human drama.

Oct 12, 2010 — This essay originally appeared in the October 1990 issue of Cahiers du cinéma. Translated by Stephen Sarrazin. The Magician is one of Bergman’s most enigmatic films, perhaps his underground masterpiece, one of the keys to his cinema. Traveling actors, maids...

Sep 10, 2009 — Is That Hamilton Woman, starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier at their most heart-stoppingly beautiful and mutually enraptured, one of the most romantic movies ever made because or in spite of the fact that it was designed as propaganda? It...

Oct 24, 2005 — Kihachi Okamoto’s subversion of the samurai movie possesses the same gritty, stark realism with regard to imagery and body count, yet the tone is decidedly comic.

Oct 24, 2005 — Mirroring changes in awareness, politics, and lifestyle occurring across the globe, the chanbara (or Japanese swordplay film) underwent a significant metamorphosis in the early 1960s, acquiring a decidedly more radical spirit. Seemingly without warning, groundbreaking cinematic styles from beyond the...

Mar 5, 2018 — On the anniversary of his birth, we look back on the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, one of the most radical figures of Italian cinema.

Feb 3, 2015 — Jean-Luc Godard returned to the character-driven intensity of his earlier films with this satirical but serious-minded take on men, women, and money.