Mind Game

Feb 5, 2020 — Performances Judy Davis chomps softly into Naked Lunch: into twisted behavior, into the nuanced meat of the moment, into the juicy black center of the psychic abyss. Bombed-out but supernally alert and incongruously amused, she injects a syringe into her...

May 22, 2023 — Get in character for a journey through the history of Method acting, a movement that transformed the art of screen performance forever.

Jan 21, 2022 — Welles, Hitchcock, Malick, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Jonas Mekas appear between the covers this month.

Dec 14, 2021 — Handsome volumes on Wes Anderson and David Fincher, a biography of Greta Garbo, and a memoir from Mel Brooks are among this month’s highlights.

Mar 18, 2021 — The range this month is wide, from Tsai Ming-liang to Ida Lupino, from Tobe Hooper to Josephine Baker.

Jan 24, 2020 — This week we’re looking at new work from Víctor Erice, the varied oeuvre of Agnès Varda, the cinematic lighthouse, the making of Before Sunrise, and more.

Sep 26, 2005 — “They were down for each other.” If one wanted to pitch the concept of Bad Timing in six words, this comment by its director, Nicolas Roeg, couldn’t be bettered.

Feb 22, 2009 — “If there’s such a thing as an ideal time of day to expose yourself to the deranging, hallucinatory visions of the Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, midnight might well be it,” writes critic and Criterion contributor Terrence Rafferty in a terrific...

Dec 13, 2022 — A pioneering feminist artist drawn to universal themes, the Swedish director mined the complexity and humor of human behavior in films that courted controversy and cultivated a sense of detachment.

Sep 8, 1998 — In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...