Before, Now & Then

Jul 19, 2011 — In May 1956, an Indian film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. It wasn’t well attended. The Indian delegation had done little to promote it, arranging only a single midnight screening that clashed with a party in honor of...

Jun 14, 2011 —   The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars —T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets   The year is 1954: a fabulous bit of film history is about to unfurl. Grips are...

Apr 25, 2005 — In Andrzej Wajda’s masterful antiwar film, we see scarcely a single combat death, yet the dark radiance of doom haloes one and all.

Mar 14, 2005 — The first time I put an eye behind a camera (a 16mm Bell & Howell), it was in a lunatic asylum. The head of the institution was a great big hulk of a man with a face so ravaged by...

Aug 18, 2003 — Ingmar Bergman’s chamber film is his most concentrated inquiry into the significance of religion, and of Lutheranism specifically.

Jan 19, 2018 — Two marvels of midcentury social commentary now streaming on the Criterion Channel show how progress can be a one-step-forward, two-steps-backward process.

Sep 16, 2026 — You may think you already know more than enough about the man, but critics find that there’s “a fearsome power” in the way Gibney’s brought it all together.

Apr 23, 2026 — Over the next four days, the Museum of the Moving Image will be showcasing a wide range of “adventurous new cinema.”

Sep 3, 2024 — The Room Next Door, The Brutalist, and Babygirl are met with both wild enthusiasm and serious reservations.

Apr 24, 2024 — In this early-career gem from one of the most beloved Japanese animation directors of all time, an extravagant sci-fi narrative is anchored by the transcendent power of young love and poignant observations of modern life.