The Criterion Collection
Jul 9, 2007 — The names Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kobo Abe, and Toru Takemitsu loom large among Japanese intellectuals of the late twentieth century. Each in his own right was an artist of peculiar genius, each resisting easy classification in conventional categories: Teshigahara as filmmaker,...
Feb 13, 2006 — John Ford’s biographical drama portrays an imaginary antebellum America with relaxed humor and effortless nostalgic charm while sustaining an underlying note of somber apprehension.
Essays
Nov 21, 2005 — Akira Kurosawa’s late masterpiece is a tragedy fed by Shakespeare, Noh, and the samurai epic; it shows human brutality, warfare, and suffering as if from the eye of a dispassionate God.
Essays
Mar 15, 2004 — This Japanese classic’s guiding passion is hunger, and its central image—a gaping black hole in the earth—is that of an all-consuming maw.
Mar 13, 2004 — With uncharacteristic warmth and affection for human frailty, Ingmar Bergman raises the question of how love can possibly last forever.
Mar 10, 2003 — The Swedish director of I Am Curious explains how he fused the themes of eroticism, self-exploration, voyeurism, and nonviolence into a film about the new freedoms of the young. QUESTION: I Am Curious seemed to be a cinematic Tristram Shandy,...
Feb 10, 2003 — The poet Paul Eluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car. Ordinarily, I would settle for that. However, with so much being written about the film...
Nov 11, 2002 — Continued from Anatomy of a Love Festival - Part One The real turn-on, though, was the music—twenty-two hours of it, divided into solid chunks that usually ran more than thirty minutes. Friday night was the epitome of what San Francisco...
Nov 19, 2001 — Luis Buñuel’s drama is a seductive work that exemplifies, even as it studies, the perversity of human desire.
Aug 20, 2001 — I have known Torben Skjødt since 1983. His debut video Englefjæs—which I thought to be very accomplished—was presented during a film week in Silkeborg. A debut work, yes, but made with a self-assured maturity by a self-taught creator of images....