The Long Absence

Jul 26, 2011 — To a secular eye, Jean-Pierre Melville’s sixth feature film, Léon Morin, Priest (1961), is about almost anything except religion: the deleterious effects of sexual repression, the moral bleariness of wartime and life under occupation, the harsh inflections of history in...

Jul 13, 2010 — At the author’s request, Japanese names are given here in their traditional form: surname first. Ozu Yasujiro’s personal feelings about Japanese militarism in the 1930s and 1940s are not on record. Perhaps, like most people around him, he accepted the...

Nov 16, 2008 — Chungking Express (1994) was the Masculin féminin of the 1990s, a pop-art movie about cool twentysomethings looking for love in the city that has replaced Paris as the center of the world-cinema imagination. What Jean-Luc Godard did for “the children...

May 15, 2020 — Directors, actors, and critics look back on their most memorable moments in movie theaters, and the BFI spotlights the best of Japanese cinema.

Jul 17, 2026 — Some early reviews raise a few objections, but for the most part, Nolan is wowing critics with his grandest vision yet.

Nov 7, 2023 — By the end of the 1970s, everything had changed for Jackie Chan. He had cowritten, directed, and starred in The Fearless Hyena, which became the top-grossing Hong Kong film of 1979. His next project, The Young Master, would top that...

Apr 9, 2021 — A round on the origins of works by Isabel Sandoval, Sky Hopinka, Steve McQueen, Pasolini, and Rivette.

Dec 3, 2019 — The Gotham Awards honor Noah Baumbach’s gripping divorce story and pay tribute to an endearing actress.

Sep 21, 2015 — Krzysztof Kieślowski’s political and philosophical rumination, which marked an important turning point in the director's career, imagines a young man's life branching off in three possible directions.

Jul 24, 2026 — September will bring new films from Lee Chang-dong, Julia Loktev, Barbara Kopple, Mariano Llinás, and Takashi Miike.