The Favor

Mar 3, 2020 — American cinema is over 125 years old, and African Americans have been a part of it from the beginning. This participation has often been fraught, stymied, and curtailed, but the desire to use motion pictures to craft a self-image has...

Oct 2, 2019 — 1. Local Hero was the first film soundtrack that Dire Straits singer and guitarist Mark Knopfler ever composed and performed, and the album was so successful that it reportedly made more money than the film. The final song in the...

Sep 20, 2019 — In the winter of 1981, when I was young, I fell madly in love with a handsome poet. About two weeks into our affaire de cœur, we went to the Thalia on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to see...

Aug 23, 2019 — After more than three decades in front of the camera, Natasha Lyonne understands a thing or two about what makes on-screen charisma. Previously best known for her early-career performances in films like Slums of Beverly Hills and But I’m a Cheerleader, she has in...

Apr 5, 2019 — Two-Lane Blacktop A longtime Criterion contributor, Kent Jones has written for us on everything from the glories of studio filmmaking to the most daring and cerebral of art-house auteurs. But regardless of the subject he’s set his sights on, he’s...

Feb 22, 2019 — If I were to list the criteria for my ideal project, creating a sculpture of Tadzio, the young boy from Death in Venice, for a Criterion release of Luchino Visconti’s adaptation would just about tick off all the boxes. Firstly, I love cinema,...

Feb 12, 2019 — In a stark, forbidding prison, a nun ascends a staircase, framed by vertical bars, and walks down a corridor, unlocking cell doors. Women start coming out; two of them quarrel. Smoking on her bunk, one inmate sighs when told she...

Feb 7, 2019 — Repertory Picks On Saturday evening, as part of the series A Tribute to Nicolas Roeg, the late, great director’s haunting 1973 masterpiece Don’t Look Now will show at the Brattle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 35 mm. (The film will be...

Jun 11, 2018 — Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind the fashion brand Rodarte, are known for handmade garments that are both beautiful and outlandish. Raised in a redwood forest in northern California, the two came to their careers not through any previous expertise...

May 23, 2018 — About halfway through Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (2016), Dr. Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) finds himself in a patch of woods in the middle of the night, crying. It’s a surprisingly vulnerable moment for a protagonist who is usually all business. We’re...