Introduction to Life

Jun 20, 2017 — “Bertrand Tavernier joins a growing list of filmmakers who've made what amounts to an epic video essay with My Journey Through French Cinema, a three-hour-plus leap into notable French filmmaking from roughly 1930 to 1980,” writes Clayton Dillard at Slant....

Jun 18, 2017 — “This book will be one of the most important film publications of 2017,” declares David Bordwell, introducing a guest post from Charles Maland, who’s edited Complete Film Criticism: Reviews, Essays, and Manuscripts, Volume Five in the University of Tennessee Press...

May 21, 2017 — Tonight, Sunday, May 21, 2017, Twin Peaks returns, just as Laura Palmer (may have) predicted it would twenty-five years ago, give or take. Eighteen one-hour episodes, all directed by David Lynch and cowritten with the show’s original co-creator, Mark Frost....

May 20, 2017 — “Robin Campillo’s 120 Battements Par Minute [BPM (Beats Per Minute)] is a passionately acted ensemble movie about ACT UP in France in the late 80s, the confrontational direct-action movement which demanded immediate, large-scale research into AIDS,” begins the Guardian’s Peter...

Dec 21, 2016 — Romance has served as the foundation for some of film history’s most significant partnerships. Over at the Criterion Channel, we’re celebrating couples who shared a chemistry both on-screen and in real life with Creative Marriages, a series of double bills...

Jul 7, 2016 — Half a century after Jacqueline Susann’s sensational novel Valley of the Dolls became a best seller, this cult-classic portrait of glamour and excess is enjoying a fabulous comeback.

May 31, 2016 — With Alice in the Cites, Wim Wenders created one of the most nuanced and complex portraits of an empowered young girl ever seen on-screen.

Apr 4, 2016 — Ray Dolby did not match the conventional image of an eccentric inventor, nor that of a business mogul. But his name now represents a benchmark by which the recording of sound and its playback on disc and in movie theaters...

Jul 23, 2015 — The composer is credited with scoring eleven films for Bergman—among them Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), Wild Strawberries (1957), and The Magician (1958)—the last being The Virgin Spring (1960), with its evocative use of medieval instruments.

Jun 11, 2015 — The author recalls the two great cinematographers and their work.