Human Nature

Apr 12, 2017 — With a comprehensive retrospective of her work opening at New York’s Quad Cinema, Lina Wertmüller chats with us about her early days as a moviegoer and her collaborative process.

Oct 30, 2008 — This week, the New York Times compiled its special annual holiday movie preview, and judging by Charles Taylor and Stephanie Zacharek’s enthusiasm for a slew of upcoming DVD releases for November and December, it seems critics are looking forward to...

Nov 12, 2007 — What is left of Berlin Alexanderplatz, this endless canon of the sublime and the trivial, is thus a perpetuum mobile of the human dance of love and death.

Dec 11, 2024 — In this semiautobiographical meditation on the fickle nature of creative genius, Federico Fellini opens his arms wide to the enigmas of childhood, religion, art, sex, and love—mysteries with no solution.

Dec 13, 2022 — A pioneering feminist artist drawn to universal themes, the Swedish director mined the complexity and humor of human behavior in films that courted controversy and cultivated a sense of detachment.

Sep 13, 2018 — The imitation of nature becomes a devotional act in Terrence Malick’s cinema, which reaches sublime heights in this exploration of childhood, memory, and grief.

Nov 16, 2017 — One of the masters of the French crime film explains how the film-noir form serves as a convenient vehicle for exploring such elemental human themes as freedom and betrayal.

Nov 22, 2016 — The result of a notoriously troubled production, Marlon Brando’s unorthodox western presents a brooding vision of human futility.

Jul 25, 2016 — In his masterful reimagining of the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, Terrence Malick meditates on the nature of beauty and America’s path from innocence to experience.

Aug 12, 2014 — The emotional culmination of a brilliant career in film, John Cassavetes’s unruly masterpiece is an enigmatic character study and a direct investigation of the nature of love.