Looking for Alibrandi

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...

Dec 21, 2008 — In 1962, Roberto Rossellini called a press conference in a bookshop in Rome and announced that the cinema was dead. “There’s a crisis not just in film but culture as a whole,” he explained. Increasingly, Rossellini had understood the great...

Dec 16, 2008 — Science-fiction drama, western, love story, metaphysical mystery, and satire of modern America, Nicolas Roeg’s beguiling film established him as a mainstream heir to such 1960s experimentalists as Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, and Chris Marker.

Nov 27, 2008 — A genuine cause célèbre, adapted from Romain Gary’s 1970 nonfiction novel, Samuel Fuller’s late work is an unusually blunt and suggestively metaphoric account of American racism.

Oct 6, 2008 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s ninth and to that point most commercially successful feature in France, was an important watershed in the director’s career.

Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s ingenious tale of Viennese cafe society conveys both the transience of individual passions and the durability of passion itself as a motivating force in human behavior.

Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s 1952 comedy celebrates existence by presenting a world full of unresolvable contradictions.

Jul 21, 2008 — A dreamy alternative to the standard notion of horror, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s phantasmal film reimagined the figure of the vampire.

Jul 21, 2008 — Akira Kurosawa’s modern adaptation of an American thriller represents a departure from his usual themes and stylistic choices.

Jun 23, 2008 — Five years of increasingly horrific news from the former Yugoslavia made Milcho Manchevski’s searing yet lyrical film timely to a degree that few filmmakers have ever achieved.