The Criterion Collection
Oct 23, 2013 — If there’s one quality that separates John Cassavetes’s movies from almost everybody else’s, it’s the density of detail in the storytelling. His films need to be read closely, from beginning to end. There are no lulls with Cassavetes, no lapses...
Nov 20, 2012 — Michael Cimino’s visionary western is a superbly realized account of a shocking real American tragedy.
Short Takes
Mar 16, 2012 — One Scene 1973 Ford Pinto with Tanguy Sky (“3 Women”) 2011 | oil on canvas | 40 x 60 inches Robert Altman’s 3 Women is a surrealistic and unsettling study in identity theft, where personalities intertwine and unravel amid the desolation of the American...
Essays
Oct 4, 2011 — Pier Paolo Pasolini’s work demonstrates an aversion for the present while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of escaping it, and thus the need to confront it.
Nov 8, 2010 — To say that Lars von Trier deals in provocation and controversy is like saying John Ford made westerns: obviously true, but far from giving a measure of the director’s importance. Ever since The Element of Crime polarized critics at Cannes...
Essays
Aug 18, 2009 — Jacques Tati’s masterpiece converts work into play so pleasurably that it turns the very acts of seeing and hearing into a form of dancing.
Apr 19, 2022 — Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist fable deploys barbed humor and surreal flourishes to depict class solidarity and human kindness in postwar Italy.
The Daily
Jul 31, 2025 — Series celebrating a giant of American cinema are on in Boston, Chicago, Berkeley, and Los Angeles.
Mar 18, 2025 — In what he described as his “first serious drama,” Charlie Chaplin channeled the influence of modernist literature, foreign cinema, and his European travels into a work of striking formal sophistication.
The Daily
Jun 21, 2023 — The Method, riffs on pop culture, and a fist fight with Lawrence Tierney all figure in this month’s roundup on new and noteworthy titles.