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Mar 16, 2009 — This long-underappreciated giant of Japanese cinema was an innovative visual stylist and a born storyteller who preferred to make films about outsiders.

Mar 10, 2009 — Akira Kurosawa made Dodes’ka-den (1970) during the most crisis-laden period of his career. He had just spent two years embroiled in an ill-fated venture with the Hollywood studio Twentieth Century Fox to direct the Japanese segments of the World War...

Feb 9, 2009 — Luis Buñuel’s ferociously brilliant The Exterminating Angel (1962) is one of his most provocative and unforgettable works. In it, we watch a trivial breach of etiquette transform into the destruction of civilization. Not only does this story undermine our confidence...

Feb 4, 2009 — If you happen to be in Columbus, Ohio, next week, you’ll have the chance to learn more about how Criterion Collection DVDs are made. On Monday, February 9, our very own Kim Hendrickson, Criterion executive producer, will appear at the...

Jan 25, 2009 — Conventional wisdom once held that any European film worth seeing passed through the New York Film Festival. Still, when I first began reviewing movies for the Village Voice in the late seventies, there were some legendary exceptions: Tarkovsky’s The Mirror,...

Oct 20, 2008 — Though he had been directing films since the silent era, Kenji Mizoguchi didn’t become an international sensation until after the Second World War, benefiting from a new fascination with Japan’s cinematic output.

Sep 22, 2008 — With their rotating casts of sourpuss Finns and their stringent compositions, Aki Kaurismäki’s films would seem the least likely candidates for laughs, yet his black-comic precision has made him one of the most warmly embraced filmmakers on the international art-house...

Arguably the most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa had a career that spanned from the Second World War to the early nineties and that stands as a monument of artistic and personal achievement.

Aug 18, 2008 — One of the most awarded films in Japanese history, Keisuke Kinoshita’s nostalgia piece unfolds a celebration of family values and scenic beauty.

Aug 11, 2008 — Every Guy Maddin movie creates the illusion of a secret history. His willfully primitive cut-rate spectacles seem like artifacts, reanimated bits of cultural detritus, but also like hauntings, the return of the cinematic repressed. From the start, Maddin’s sensibility was...