The Criterion Collection
Sep 21, 2010 — Warrendale: Man of ActionAllan King was one of cinema’s most acute chroniclers of unadorned reality, but the term documentary seems too puny to describe the intense, passionate stories he contrived to fashion from that reality. King’s early nonfiction features are...
Jul 19, 2010 — “Why do you want to dance?” “Why do you want to live?” A question followed by another question stands at the beating heart of The Red Shoes. It’s an entirely rhetorical exchange, but it underscores the power and the mystery...
Jun 14, 2010 — All writing is travel writing, the axiom goes. And for Jim Jarmusch, perhaps more than any other filmmaker working today, all movies are travel movies. It’s not a slight to call him the epitome of the filmmaker as tourist. In...
Apr 21, 2010 — This piece originally appeared in La revue du son in December 1962, and was translated by Royal S. Brown for his 1972 book Focus on Godard. When Jean Collet submitted the article for the collection, he wrote that his remarks...
Dec 1, 2009 — Running a taut ninety-one minutes, this documentary about the Rolling Stones is a masterpiece of restraint and understatement.
Dec 25, 2008 — Robert Rossellini’s efforts to put history into images would yield some forty-two hours of “didactic” movies, mostly for television.
Essays
Nov 23, 2008 — The possession of a real voice is always a marvel, an almost religious thing.
Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.
Mar 26, 2007 — Across five films, the Swedish director defined his guiding themes and cinematic style.