In Our Day

Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s ingenious tale of Viennese cafe society conveys both the transience of individual passions and the durability of passion itself as a motivating force in human behavior.

Oct 16, 2007 — Ididn’t create the Criterion office’s word-of-the-day bulletin board, but I’m the latest logophile to carry the torch, er, dry-erase marker and update the white board in the kitchen. Occasionally someone will ask me what a certain word means (psocid was...

Jan 16, 2007 — The marvel of Mouchette inheres in the elegance, obstinacy, and capaciousness of Bresson’s double-mindedness.

Dec 1, 2006 — We left St-Michel feeling uplifted and took a nice stroll south, past the Closerie des Lilas, the restaurant made famous by Hemingway, and through the Luxembourg gardens, where a film crew was laying dolly tracks and fitting counterweights on a...

May 22, 2006 — Luis Buñuel’s merciless satire concerns the smallness of our vision of progress and our narrow attempts to achieve it through rational or moralistic planning.

Dec 6, 2004 — In his first freestanding biblical epic, Cecil B. DeMille recognized and revered a profound quality in the American soul—its ability to leap over every contradiction through an invincible sense of its own righteousness.

Aug 2, 2004 — This kinetic and ineffably voluptuous musical is the happiest and most exuberant ripple in Jean Renoir’s career as a river of personal expression.

Jul 19, 2004 — In Yasujiro Ozu’s hands, the extended-family drama widened its focus to encompass friends, neighbors, and employers.

Dec 18, 2000 — Elegant humor cloaks despair in Luis Buñuel’s masterwork, wherein greedy characters flee their toxic lives and find refuge in the loneliness of dreams.

Jan 11, 1994 — A harrowing nightmare about life in inner-city hell, this 1993 sleeper-hit is a powerhouse filmmaking debut by the Hughes brothers.