Brief Encounter

Oct 27, 2014 — Though he emerged from established stage and screen comedy traditions, Tati invented a completely new filmic language.

May 27, 2014 — Howard Hawks was both a skillful Hollywood craftsman and a deeply personal artist, and this western of uncommon wit and grandeur is among his greatest and quirkiest films.

Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?

Sep 25, 2013 — Roberto Rossellini’s tale of modern sainthood demonstrates the importance of opening oneself to the wider world.

Nov 14, 2012 — Jean Luc Godard’s exuberant, multipronged attack on the bourgeoisie is both theater of the absurd and political horror.

Jul 24, 2012 — Trained as a musician, Jean Grémillon became one of French cinema’s most lyrical artists. His most beloved films were made during World War II.

May 29, 2012 — A watershed film in Bergman’s career, this tale of a woman caught between the past and present is a masterful study in darkness and light.

Jan 25, 2012 — Creating an effect of pity and terror unique in Francesco Rosi’s cinema, The Moment of Truth ought by rights to be counted among his finest achievements. On its original release in 1965, Pauline Kael acclaimed “the beauty of rage, masterfully...

Dec 13, 2011 — Seijun Suzuki’s delirious, absurdist deconstruction of the crime genre is the strangest film the director made at Nikkatsu, Japan’s oldest film company.

Feb 7, 2011 — Death looms over the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda. His first fiction feature, Maborosi (1995), is a quiet study of bereavement, about a young woman struggling to move on after her husband’s inexplicable suicide. In After Life (1998), a supernatural fable...