Heart of a Dog

Apr 17, 2019 — Dark Passages The old saying that there are no small parts, only small actors, has surely caused thespians of all sizes to roll their eyes and gnash their teeth. But there are performances that stick in the mind forever with...

Mar 28, 2018 — “Forty-seven years young,” writes the staff at Slant, “New Directors/New Films—programmed by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art—is an eclectic, geographically far-flung survey of bourgeoning filmmaking talent, and more than ever, this year’s lineup...

Dec 14, 2017 — Guillermo del Toro will co-write (with Kim Morgan), direct, and produce a remake of Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley (1947; image above), reports Variety’s Justin Kroll, noting that the original “starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who hooks up...

Aug 2, 2017 — “Jonathan Demme loved people,” begins Matt Prigge, writing for Metro US. “There are villains in his movies—most notably that charming aesthete Hannibal Lecter, who loved people, too, only as food. And his biggest hits were about strife: the hunt for...

Jun 5, 2017 — Catherine Grant points us to the new issue of the open access journal Film-Philosophy. Before we begin paging through it, let’s have a look at a piece by Benjamin Crais which the Notebook ran last December:For Anglophone readers, Jean Louis...

May 19, 2017 — We’ll get to the film at hand in a moment, but first—and just briefly—there’s no getting around the controversy that’s all but dominated the first couple of days at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It began, really, when the festival...

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...

Oct 27, 2009 — Who speaks of Howards End these days? Who expounds on the virtues of this magnificent drama, whose traditional style seems almost as distant as its Edwardian setting? Seen today, years past its 1992 release, it strikes one as not only...

Oct 6, 2009 — Our Jeanne Dielman–Criterion Collection Cooking Video Contest on YouTube has been a huge success, thanks to scores of filmmakers who served up more than fifty delectable entries! We’ve been amazed at the quality of the submissions, and now we need...

Mar 12, 2007 — Kon Ichikawa’s incendiary and extraordinarily brutal war film renders the emotional carnage that festers long after the battle’s end.