End of the World

Nov 8, 2010 — To say that Lars von Trier deals in provocation and controversy is like saying John Ford made westerns: obviously true, but far from giving a measure of the director’s importance. Ever since The Element of Crime polarized critics at Cannes...

Mar 17, 2010 — 1. A Park—Night A man aflame is running directly toward camera. This image, which comes from Nicholas Ray’s initial treatment for Rebel Without a Cause, might stand at the head of almost any of Ray’s movies, since it so clearly...

Mar 16, 2010 — More than a decade after his death in 1997, the moment is right for the rediscovery of the work of Marco Ferreri. “I think he’s modern. More than modern, in fact,” frequent collaborator Marcello Mastroianni once remarked, encapsulating how far...

Aug 18, 2009 — In the late 1970s, during the long years of waiting for international and domestic funding to come together to produce Kagemusha, Akira Kurosawa returned to the pastime of his youth—he painted. Working fast and furiously, each day turning out scores...

Jun 22, 2009 — So much critical ink has been shed over Last Year at Marienbad that one might wonder if the flood of commentary, once receded, would take the film along with it. Alain Resnais’ second feature has been lavishly praised and royally...

Dec 11, 1989 — Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic divided film history into that which came before and that which was possible after its epochal appearance.

Nov 26, 2018 — The Magnificent Ambersons “Plus one and minus one equal nothing. So you mean I’m nothing in particular?” —Isabel “Remember you very well indeed.” —George “George, you never saw me before in your life!” —Eugene What is this cult I signed up...

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.

Oct 26, 2016 — The tropes of light comedy give way to a Kafkaesque nightmare in this incendiary critique of moral rot in Franco-era Spain.

Oct 2, 2012 — Set in 1960s Hong Kong, Wong Kar-wai’s ravishing masterpiece is both a love song to a city and a human romance of epic intimacy.