As Good as Dead

Sep 21, 2016 — An exhilarating blend of noir and splatter-flick tropes, the Coen brothers’ debut feature established their unique brand of cosmic fatalism.

Aug 17, 2015 — François Truffaut’s love letter to the movies is a lightheartedly self-reflexive symphony of camera movement and musical flourish.

May 22, 2015 — It is one of my most strongly held critical beliefs that you should not write about films you don’t like. First, it is bad for the soul to exult in pointing out the deficiencies of the film in question. Second,...

Jul 15, 2014 — Ihave an unusually easy way of remembering when I first became fascinated by Robert Bresson’s films. Pickpocket (1959) was the first one I saw, at the old Orson Welles theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in my late teens; it was also...

Apr 14, 2014 — Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.

Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?

Mar 13, 2013 — The slimiest movie monster of them all is part of—and perfects—a great tradition of unstoppable outer-space invaders.

Oct 30, 2012 — All of them actors? Nearly everyone wears a mask in Roman Polanski’s devilishly clever work of horror.

Apr 28, 2011 — When Criterion producer Susan Arosteguy was at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, last month, she met local cooking teacher and cinephile Ron Deutsch in line for a screening. They got to chatting, and Ron told Susan...

Aug 18, 2003 — One of the Swedish director’s most representative works, this drama’s portentousness, banked intensity, and recondite symbolism come near to embodying the popular stereotype of the Bergmanesque.