Close-Up

Feb 24, 2017 — Cinema lost one of its most venerated maestros of excess last week with the passing of director Seijun Suzuki, whose signature films from the 1960s exploded the conventions of the Japanese studio system. While honing his craft in dozens of...

Jan 11, 2017 — A revelatory restoration of Lewis Milestone’s underappreciated newsroom comedy accentuates the film’s punchy rhythms and breakneck banter.

Dec 6, 2016 — This elegiac meditation on impermanence showcases Laurie Anderson’s playfully experimental approach to sound and image.

Nov 29, 2016 — Anahita Ghazvinizadeh’s short film Needle, which won the 2013 Cinefondation prize at Cannes, premieres today on the Criterion Channel as part of our weekly Short + Feature. I first met Anahita through programming the short at the Chicago International Film...

Nov 15, 2016 — Akira Kurosawa lays bare his deepest fears in this visually astonishing interpretation of folklore, myth, and the director’s own dreams and memories.

Oct 5, 2016 — Rock critic Robert Christgau examines the evocative use of three early Leonard Cohen songs in Robert Altman’s brilliant revisionist western.

Sep 12, 2016 — Before kicking off a week run of To Sleep with Anger at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the influential director joined us for a conversation about how his encounters with international cinema inspired him as a filmmaker of color.

Aug 17, 2016 — The director of Morris for America, a poignant coming-of-age tale about a thirteen-year-old boy and his widowed father, talks about his eclectic inspirations and unique approach to movie watching.

Aug 16, 2016 — Stig Björkman’s candid documentary gathers a wealth of material from Ingrid Bergman’s personal archive, revealing the star as a fastidious collector of her own memories.

Jul 19, 2016 — Time is both inescapable and irretrievable in Alain Resnais’s boldly disorienting masterpiece, which stars Delphine Seyrig as a widow haunted by her memories of World War II.