The Criterion Collection
May 31, 2017 — New Taiwan Cinema master Edward Yang’s sophomore feature explores the conflict between tradition and modernity reflected in a relationship on the rocks.
Apr 7, 2017 — Did You See This? Radley Metzger, the erotica pioneer who took soft core and hard core to new heights of artistry, has passed away at the age of eighty-eight. The New York Times remembers the director’s career, which began in...
Mar 1, 2017 — In his most seductive experiment with cinematic time, Richard Linklater wrestles with the joys and challenges of long-term intimacy.
On the Channel
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...
Essays
Oct 26, 2016 — The tropes of light comedy give way to a Kafkaesque nightmare in this incendiary critique of moral rot in Franco-era Spain.
May 10, 2016 — Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place imbues the conventions of film noir with a subtle, tense vulnerability that lends a naturalistic weight to the film’s powerful emotional impact.
Jul 14, 2015 — Carroll Ballard’s film is a work of rapture, a mesmerizing adventure that envelops the viewer in the beauties of the natural world.
Jul 23, 2014 — Jacques Demy’s miraculous, melancholy musical is the rare film to use pastiche and artifice to go straight for the heart.
Essays
Jun 16, 2014 — Georges Franju evokes the surreal silent serials of Louis Feuillade while constructing his own personal cinematic paradise.
Dec 10, 2013 — In 1998, I interviewed Little Edie Beale, the surviving star of 1976’s Grey Gardens, one of the Maysles brothers’ numerous masterworks (Gimme Shelter, Meet Marlon Brando, and With Love from Truman are equal in technical and emotional innovation). Miss Beale,...