The Criterion Collection
Nov 20, 2014 — The two writers chat about Nehme’s new novel.
Oct 21, 2014 — Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.
Aug 19, 2014 — Alfonso Cuaron, a filmmaker congenitally allergic to creative constriction, made his most liberated movie with this erotic, moving, often funny threesome tale.
Aug 7, 2014 — Performances Today, the idea that comedian-actor-writer Lily Tomlin possesses dramatic versatility is so received that one might not realize how unexpected it was for audiences to see her in a serious role in Robert Altman’s Nashville in 1975. At that...
Jun 19, 2014 — PerformancesTime has added some latter-day ironies to All That Heaven Allows, and not just the revelation that its star Rock Hudson was gay. There’s also the political career of Ronald Reagan, the ex-husband of Hudson’s costar, Jane Wyman—built on the...
Jun 2, 2014 — One Scene When I first heard about The Human Condition (1959–61), I was already familiar with director Masaki Kobayashi’s irreverent Harakiri (1962), a favorite film of mine where samurai are scum of the earth and honor is equivalent to dirt....
Mar 24, 2014 — Rome is as exquisite as it is suffocating in Paolo Sorrentino’s profound tale of contemporary entropy.
Jan 28, 2014 — Terence Davies beckons the viewer into a private world of moods and sensations with this exquisite childhood reverie.
Short Takes
Jan 24, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki first read Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème in 1976. The highly influential 1851 book—an episodic novel about a group of starving artists that also inspired Puccini’s 1896 opera La bohème—captured the Finnish filmmaker’s imagination and,...
Essays
Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?