So This Is Love

May 24, 2011 — Andrei Tarkovsky belongs to that handful of filmmakers (Dreyer, Bresson, Vigo, Tati) who, with a small, concentrated body of work, created a universe. Though he made only seven features, thwarted by Soviet censors and then by cancer, each honored his...

Sep 28, 2010 — “The past, again and again.” —Major Jack Celliers, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Nagisa Oshima’s filmmaking career began with the risen sun—or rather, with the promise of a sun soon to rise: Tomorrow’s Sun (1959), a dizzyingly designed faux “coming attraction”...

Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s ingenious tale of Viennese cafe society conveys both the transience of individual passions and the durability of passion itself as a motivating force in human behavior.

Oct 16, 2006 — Screenwriter Carlos Cuarón delves into the character played by Claudia Ramírez

Aug 14, 2006 — It’s both hard and not so hard to believe that Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales were conceived—indeed, written initially—as a novel. On the one hand, he’s the grand master of dialogue as an instrument of narrative. His characters muse, reflect, analyze,...

Dec 29, 2008 — If I had not seen The Lady Vanishes at the age of seven, I might never have become a film critic. I was the fifth child of parents well into middle age: clearly an “accident,” as I was ten-years-plus younger...

Sep 13, 2019 — Lucrecia Martel, Annette Michelson, Satyajit Ray, and Joanna Hogg feature in this week’s round.

Dec 9, 2025 — In one of cinema’s greatest love stories, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger use the mercurial beauty of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides to evoke the unruly passions of an indelible heroine.

Aug 28, 2024 — Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds are at their comedic best in this tale of parent-child bonding filled with Oedipal humor and emotional insight.

Feb 14, 2022 — A ’20s jazz hit provides a rare moment of peace in Howard Hawks’s frenzied screwball comedy.