The Reader

Feb 28, 2014 — Other first films exude the sparkling joy of filmmaking that one feels in Breathless, but how many can boast its sure-handedness?

May 11, 2009 — Novelists learn not to expect too much when their books are made into movies. Obviously, great fiction has been turned into great cinema, but the dents and scrapes that so many classics have sustained on the rocky road from the...

Jonathan Owen is a writer and researcher specializing in Eastern and Central European cinema, avant-gardes, and cult film. He is the author of Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties (2011) and the coeditor of A Reader...

Jul 12, 2023 — The award-winning actor talks about training with Lee Strasberg, her involvement in the Actors Studio, and her on- and off-screen contributions to two of her most important films.

Oct 20, 2021 — The range this month stretches from the silent era to this weekend’s launch of The Liberated Film Club.

Aug 12, 2015 — Director Karel Reisz and writer Harold Pinter’s brilliant adaptation of John Fowles’s novel focuses on the experiences of women in two radically different eras.

Dec 13, 2016 — Yesterday, we kicked off our Criterion Channel series Spy Games by sharing Graham Greene's review of Jacques Feyder’s Knight Without Armour, a highlight in the lineup. Today, we’re focusing on another title in the series, Sabotage, which marked “the first...

Dec 12, 2016 — Patriotic masterminds choreograph capers from secret headquarters while dashing secret agents execute their plans by the light of flashing blades and gunfire. Jeopardy escalates second to second until our heroes and heroines escape by the skin of their teeth. Spy...

Jul 8, 2013 — With its marvelous, distinctive camera work, Kenji Mizoguchi’s searing drama is as technically remarkable as it is humane.

Aug 14, 2012 — The Dardennes threw down the gauntlet for a new type of unadorned dramatic storytelling with their breakthrough tale of a working-class boy’s fraught coming-of-age.