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Aug 17, 2009 — Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece, a mesmerizing study of stasis and containment, time and domestic anxiety. Stretching its title character’s daily household routine in long, stark takes, Akerman’s film simultaneously allows viewers to...

Jul 16, 2009 — The venerable critic Andrew Sarris, now eighty-one years old, gets his due in a lovely profile in the New York Times by Michael Powell (no, not that one). This die-hard auteurist, who has contributed writing and been featured in on-screen...

Jul 14, 2009 — The decade-long Apollo program was the largest and most expensive undertaking in the history of man that wasn’t devoted to a war. During the four years between 1968 and 1972, there were nine manned flights to the moon. Twenty-four men...

Jul 10, 2009 — The final, resolutely unfashionable film from grand old master Carl Theodor Dreyer, Gertrud was met with dismissal in 1964 and continues to be somewhat overlooked even today. But this week, Jonathan Rosenbaum reminds us of its unique beauties and unconventional...

Jul 10, 2009 — In the epic table talk à clef that is My Dinner with André, André, a theater director (played by theater director André Gregory), tells his old friend Wally (played by playwright and actor Wallace Shawn) about a long journey he...

Jul 2, 2009 — This week, Agnès Varda’s beguiling new film, the autobiographical documentary The Beaches of Agnès, makes its U.S. premiere at New York’s Film Forum, and for the occasion A. O. Scott has profiled the indefatigable eighty-one-year-old auteur in a splendid article...

Jun 22, 2009 — So much critical ink has been shed over Last Year at Marienbad that one might wonder if the flood of commentary, once receded, would take the film along with it. Alain Resnais’ second feature has been lavishly praised and royally...

Jun 3, 2009 — We’ve pieced together comments from production designer Donald Burt and property master Hope Parrish of working with the supermeticulous and precise David Fincher on perfecting the atmosphere and historical accuracy of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. You can click...

May 20, 2009 — Early in Shohei Imamura’s Intentions of Murder, the librarian Riichi distractedly peruses Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization while conversing with his clinging mistress, Yoshiko. One can read the reference in many ways: as a glancing jest, as an (uncharacteristic) Imamurian...

May 20, 2009 — The title alone screams incongruity. Shohei Imamura’s 1961 black-and-white caper movie Pigs and Battleships bursts with the confusion and exuberance of a cross-cultural encounter. In its lively portrayal of enthusiastic Japanese locals welcoming the U.S. Navy on R&R to the...