Jungle

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...

Mar 12, 2007 — Kon Ichikawa’s incendiary and extraordinarily brutal war film renders the emotional carnage that festers long after the battle’s end.

Aug 14, 2006 — “Some people think rohmer is in league with the devil,” wrote cinematographer Nestor Almendros in his book of autobiographical reflections on the cinema, A Man with a Camera. He was describing his working experience on My Night at Maud’s (1969)....

Jun 19, 2006 — This essay originally appeared in the fanzine PHOTON (issue #22), in 1972. Stop-motion animation has been attracting a growing number of enthusiasts for about the last ten years, and though it seems the majority of these people must out of...

Jun 27, 2005 — Kô Nakahira’s taboo-busting melodrama heralded a reinvention of Japanese cinema.

May 9, 2005 — Les Blank’s documentary examines the interaction of premodern tribal existence with European modernity, epitomized by a movie narrative about the invidious clash of brute nature and a singular ego bent on his own mission of cultural enlightenment.

Jun 4, 2001 — Mario Monicelli’s caper comedy is that genuine rarity in popular culture: a satire that not only helped kill off one movie genre, but started a whole new subgenre in the process.

Feb 19, 2001 — Leaving the theater after the tumultuous world premiere of Do the Right Thing at Cannes in May of 1989, I found myself too shaken to speak, and I avoided the clusters of people where arguments were already heating up. One...

Mar 13, 2000 — The following is excerpted from The Shifting Point, Peter Brook’s 1987 autobiography. All I wanted was a small sum of money, no script; just kids, a camera, and a beach. A young American, Lewis Allen, felt that private backers could...

Jun 7, 1999 — “Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—” “What island is it?” Rainsford asked. “The old charts called it Ship-Trap Island,” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it?” Sailors have a curious dread of...