The Criterion Collection
May 31, 2017 — Long difficult to see, this transgressive silent masterpiece draws on a wide range of aesthetic influences to push against the boundaries of film form.
Sep 2, 2014 — The following is excerpted from the book-length study Terence Davies, out September 8. See the bottom of the post for a clip of the scene it describes. Excerpt copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois...
Essays
Aug 30, 2022 — A lyrical study of a farming community in Ethiopia, Jessica Beshir’s debut feature reckons with the consequences of the region’s reliance on the cash crop khat.
Feb 22, 2022 — The fourth feature by the Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui devastatingly lays bare the conditions that spurred hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to flee after the fall of Saigon.
Aug 31, 2021 — Cary Joji Fukunaga’s devastating child-soldier movie unflinchingly captures the shock of war without forsaking the complexity of human experience.
Features
May 27, 2021 — First Person I first watched Yi Yi on a busted cassette tape, in my small Texas town, rented from a Blockbuster behind a rice field and a pharmacy. If you were a high schooler growing up just outside of Houston...
Apr 2, 2021 — This week people are writing and talking about Eric Rohmer, Michael Mann, Adam Curtis, the new Jump Cut, and the king of the “geezer teasers.”
The Daily
Nov 8, 2017 — Dave Kehr’s long reviews for the Chicago Reader, published between 1974 and 1986, comprise “a body of work that, together with Kehr’s columns for Chicago magazine in the 1980s, strikes me as being the most remarkable extended stretch of auteurist...
Feb 22, 2018 — Bengali cinema icon Uttam Kumar stars as a matinee idol on the brink of failure in this deeply introspective meditation on art and fame.
The Daily
Nov 23, 2017 — Considering how reticent David Lynch can be when it comes to talking about his work, Daniel Fienberg’s fared pretty well in his conversation with him for the Hollywood Reporter. At one point, they discuss the stamina it takes to direct...