Helpless

Dec 8, 2023 — Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage), the jittery protagonist of Ridley Scott’s 2003 crime comedy Matchstick Men, doesn’t like to think of himself as a common crook. “I’m a con artist,” he insists, and—in a frenzy of self-justification—further explains: “They give me...

Jan 26, 2023 — This great director from the golden age of Mexican cinema drew upon a wide range of styles to explore the conflict between tradition and modernity.

Aug 18, 2022 — This week’s announcements from Toronto and New York promise tantalizing world premieres and other highlights of the season.

Jun 14, 2021 — Audiences immediately connected with the character actor who could hint at a deviant intent a behind an amiable smile.

May 11, 2021 — Dorothy Arzner’s deeply cynical portrait of marriage exemplifies the director’s ambivalence toward the norms dictating female behavior, wielding ironic detachment to mask one woman’s simmering inner turmoil.

Jan 15, 2021 — Songbook 1.There is music in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Still Walking that arises from the home itself. It sounds like eddies of conversation around a kitchen counter, as persistent as the crackle of frying oil. It sounds like the patter, so similar...

Dec 8, 2020 — Swiss-Moroccan filmmaker Halima Ouardiri’s short documentary Mutts is a captivating portrait of a shelter for stray dogs in Morocco, elegantly shot in a sunbaked color palette of rich golds and browns. The film, which makes its premiere on the Criterion Channel this week in...

Feb 21, 2020 — Songbook “In an instant, I remembered everything.” The Cure, “The Walk” It’s the mid-1980s, and a student in a black leather jacket walks down the hall of Polytechnic of North London. Her hair is dyed a shocking orange, maybe to...

Feb 18, 2020 — In what was no doubt an appeal to subtitle-averse audiences, advertisements for the U.S. release of Teorema (1968) trumpeted, “There are only 923 words spoken in Teorema—but it says everything!” A meager few of those utterances are expended in an...

Jan 28, 2020 — Motherhood is a recurring subject in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. The mothers in his movies are fierce, passionate, and resourceful—often in varying combinations, and to varying extremes. In Almodóvar’s darkly satirical fourth feature, What Have I Done to Deserve...