The Look

Mar 29, 1999 — Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits was the most critically well-received children’s film in nearly two decades—and also the most challenging and rewarding fantasy-adventure movie since Alexander Korda’s The Thief of Bagdad, released forty-one years earlier. At the dawn of the 1980s,...

Dec 4, 2020 — A landmark week for the industry has us looking back to past periods of tumult and change.

Dec 30, 2008 — It’s the last day of 2008, and all the balloting is finally done. Here’s a rundown of how Criterion rated in the best DVDs of the year polls: The Sight & Sound list included Criterion’s “gripping morality tale” Death of...

Nov 6, 2006 — The New York Times ran a really nice piece about the Janus box this morning. It started on the front page of the Arts section and jumped to another half page inside. It featured big pictures from M, L'Avventura, Seven...

Elena Gorfinkel is a senior lecturer in film studies at King’s College London and the author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s. Her criticism appears in Sight & Sound, Art Monthly, Cinema Scope, and other publications.

Apr 6, 2026 — New York’s Film Forum screens thirteen features by the master of urbane comedy.

Sep 18, 2025 — This month’s programs offer a feast of horror, including a John Carpenter retrospective and a collection of the most terrifying films of the 2000s.

Apr 30, 2025 — Elena Gorfinkel has written a new study of Loden’s groundbreaking feature and curated a season for the BFI.

Mar 24, 2025 — At the turn of the millennium, a loose collective of filmmakers—including Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg—made a splash with a provocative manifesto and a wave of audacious movies shot on digital video.

Dec 9, 2023 — This week we’re revisiting the work of Tolkin, Bogdanovich, and Borowczyk and reading profiles of Isabelle Huppert and Nicolas Cage.